
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE RESCUE OF AN OLD 
PLACE 



BY 



/ 



MARY CAROLINE ROBBINS 



When Epicurus to the world had taught 

That pleasure was the chiefest good, 
(And was perhaps i' the right, if rightly understood,) 

His life he to his doctrine brought, 
And in a garden's shade that sovereign pleasure sought. 

Abraham Cowlev 




MAR 17 1892 ,. 

■■-••••IRTO^. 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1892 



Or' 



s^ 






^ 



Copyright, 1892, 
By MARY CAROLINE ROBBINS. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge , Mass., U.S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



To J. H. R. 

I tretiftatt 

THESE RECORDS OF OUR HAPPY VBASS 
OF WORK AND HOPS. 



CONTENTS 

PACK 

Introduction vii 

I. The Old Place i 

II. Planting Willows and Pines ii 

III. A Baby Forest 23 

IV. Clearing Up 35 

V. On the Perversity of Certain Trees ... 51 

VI. The Wreck of an Ancient Garden ... 63 

VII. A New Perennial Garden 75 

VIII. A Venerable Orchard 85 

IX. A Struggle with the Web-worm .... 97 

X. Planting Trees on a Lawn 1 1 1 

XI. Reclaiming a Salt Meadow 123 

XII. Terraces and Shrubs 137 

XIII. Evergreens in Spring 151 

XIV. The Love of Flowers in America .... 165 
XV. The Rose-Chafer i77 

XVI. Sufferings from Drought 191 

XVII. The Blessing of the Rain 203 

XVIII. Discouragements 215 

XIX. A Water Garden 229 

XX. Landscape Gardening 245 

XXI. The Waning Year and its Suggestions . .261 
XXII. Utility versus Beauty 277 



INTRODUCTION 

These chapters, which originally ap- 
peared in Garden and Forest, were written 
partly to acknowledge a debt for many 
practical suggestions derived from its 
pages, which helped us in our efforts to 
bring harmony and beauty out of neglect 
and desolation in one of the ' ' abandoned 
farms" of Massachusetts ; and at the 
same time to show the pleasure and inter- 
est we found in endeavoring to create a 
garden and forest of our own. 

The experiments that I relate are by 
no means completed, and the mistakes 
made will call for sympathy, as the suc- 
cesses will claim congratulations ; but to 
those who will kindly go with me along 
the way we have come, at all events the 
story ought to show what can be done with 
moderate expense, by the aid of such ex- 
cellent publications as are now within 



Introduction 



reach of every one, and how, by loving 
labor, the old may be made to add charm 
and dignity to the new, while the new 
lends purpose and meaning to the old. 
What has given so much delight in doing, 
must, it seems to me, give pleasure when 
told, and it is in this hope that I venture 
to detail our very simple experience. 

M. C. R. 

Over lea, October 8, 1891. 



I 

THE OLD PLACE 



In a coign of the cliff between lowland and high- 
land, 
At the sea-down's edge between windward and 
lee, 
Walled round with rocks as an inland island, 

The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. 
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses 

The steep square slope of the blossomless bed 
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves 
of its roses 
Now lie dead. 

Swinburne. 




N the very heart of old New qid houses 
England towns there may often "Ensland. 
be seen some dilapidated house 
falling into ruins, surrounded 
by half -dead fruit-trees and straggling 
shrubs, while an adjacent garden, once 
productive and blooming, runs to waste 
beside it. Its gates are off the hinges, 
the fences falling to pieces, the hedges 
untrimmed, the flower-beds smothered in 
weeds; coarse burdocks and rampant wild 
vines encumber the ground and run over 
into the highway, the trim paths have 
disappeared, the out-houses are toppling 
over : forlornness and abandonment speak 
in every line of the decaying house, the 
former gentility of which renders its de- 
cline still more melancholy. 

It was such a dreary old place as this 
that attracted our attention when we first 
came to settle in Massachusetts. Why 
3 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

such a desirable spot should have fallen 
into disrepute was always a surprise, for 
the situation in itself was excellent, the 
estate running for nine hundred feet along 
the main street of the town, and lying 
about half way between the two villages 
known in popular parlance as The Plain 
and Broad Bridge, so that it was only a 
quarter of a mile from the post-office of 
one, while the railway station of the other 
was within a ten minutes' moderate walk 
for a man. Moreover, it commanded a 
lovely inland view, and had an unusual 
variety of surface to make it interesting, 
as well as a fertile soil for grass and gar- 
den. 
A pleasing The vicw was what particularly ap- 

prospect. . . . 

pealed to us, for it comprised a charming 
stretch of salt meadow, with a blue stream 
winding through it Hke a ribbon, skirted 
by low, heavily wooded hills, with a dis- 
tant glimpse of houses overtopped by the 
masts of the shipping in the harbor. 
From the higher levels of the farm one 
could catch a glimpse, when the leaves 
were off the trees, of a strip of blue sea, 
and Boston Light could plainly be seen 
4 



The Old Place 



house. 



revolving after sundown, while of a still 
evening the monotonous roll of the waves 
upon the beach could be clearly heard. 

The old house, which we vainly tried to The ruined 
find habitable, had stood for two hundred 
years, and must have been a fine dwelling 
in its day ; its rooms, though low-ceiled, 
being spacious and numerous, and their 
outlook picturesque. It was ill-planned 
for modern ideas, though many of its con- 
temporaries in this ancient town are still 
occupied, and by a little alteration made 
very comfortable ; while, owing to neglect 
and ill usage by tenants, the owners hav- 
ing long since moved away, it was in a 
condition of hopeless disrepair. The floors 
had settled, and the walls with them, un- 
til in some of the lower rooms there were 
gaps beside the beams of the ceiling, in 
which rats or squirrels had made their 
nests, so that supplies of nuts were to be 
seen safely stored away in the holes. The 
window-panes were broken, the shingles 
mossgrown and ragged, the chimneys fall- 
ing into ruins, and the sills had rotted 
away. Moreover, the road that wound by 
the door had been so raised by the accre- 

5 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

tion of two hundred years, that the part of 
the place around the house lay in a hollow, 
and, there being no one to complain, the 
town dug water-ways and coolly drained 
the road over the surface of the ground, 
so that, after a spring freshet, piles of 
sand were to be found all over the grass, 
giving the farm a water-logged aspect that 
added to its disrepute. 
jve buy the From this, and from the fact that, situ- 
oi pace. ^^g^ ^g j^ ^^^ between the two villages, 

it formed absolutely a part of neither of 
them — to us an advantage rather than a 
drawback, but to the town's-people an ob- 
jection — it resulted that when the farm 
was put up at auction, some ten years ago, 
no purchaser could be found at any price. 
Finally, convinced that the land was worth 
more without the house than with it, the 
owner took it down, and, to the great 
amusement and consternation of the old 
farmers, who despised the spot, we bought 
the place for a moderate sum, having con- 
vinced ourselves by careful examination 
that it would at l^ast give us an occupa- 
tion for the rest of our natural lives to get 
it into condition ; and as that was what 
6 



ne Old Place 



one of us wanted, we were disposed to try 
what could be made of it, and confound 
our critics. 

Then arose in the village a murmur of 
disapprobation and superior wisdom, such 
as is apt to follow any purchase in a New 
England country town. 

" What does the doctor want of that for- Comments 
lorn old hole ? Only a salt-ma'sh to look at, neigiibors. 
and the road a-drainin' right into it all the 
time. Ain't no place to put a house ; too 
shady and wet where the old one was, and 
ef he goes up on the hill he '11 jest blow 
away. Used to be a good farm in the old 
man's time ; best garden spot in town, but 
pretty well run out now ; and the fences ! 
It '11 take all he '11 earn to keep them 
fences in repair ; half a mile o' fencin' ef 
there 's a rod." 

And so the croaking went on behind 
our backs, and sometimes to our faces, 
with only a word of good-will now and 
then from people who recalled the charm 
of the old place when it was in the hands 
of the family, and hoped that something 
of it might in time be restored. 

We ourselves, left face to face with our 

7 



shaped lot. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

bargain, went over the land, now our own, 
and took heart of grace as we planned our 
first improvements, and decided on a site 
for the house. When we took an account 
of stock, this is what we found : — 
4 ^f ^5''; "^ curiously shaped piece of land, some- 

thing like the State of Maryland, omitting 
the Eastern Shore. The long front of 
about nine hundred feet, lying upon the 
main street, at its southern end was nearly 
six hundred feet in depth ; but this part of 
the place was a barren gravelly hill, which 
had been pastured until nothing was to be 
found upon it but a thin, wiry grass, full of 
white-weed and a growth of short briers. 
In the autumn it was a blaze of Golden- 
rod. The hill sloped steeply to the north 
and northeast, so that the side of it was 
exposed and cold, the wind sweeping up 
across the meadow from the sea in bleak- 
est gusts. This we at once determined 
was the place to plant Pines, with a view 
to a subsequent forest. At the foot of the 
hill was a fertile swale of excellent grass 
land, which intervened between it and a 
second rise of land, which was the termi- 
nation of another gravelly hill, through 
8 



The Old Place 



which the main street had been cut, leaving 
upon our side a small knoll, from which 
the ground sloped in every direction, mak- 
ing a perfectly drained and slightly ele- 
vated spot for a house, an excellent, but 
rather limited situation, perfectly barren 
of trees and requiring much grading. 

On the north side of this knoll was an- 
other abrupt slope, and then the ground 
swept on below the level of the highway, 
gradually narrowing, as a back street, run- 
ning obliquely, came to intersect the main 
road at the northern extremity of the 
place, where was an Apple orchard of im- 
mense old trees whose bending boughs 
swept the ground ; and in the very point 
a wilderness of Locusts and Wild Cher- 
ries. 

The site of the old house, shaded by The old site 
some fine Elms and White Ashes, was too Vbu/^a 
near both streets to be at all desirable, ''''"''^''■ 
though the shrubbery and the tangled re- 
mains of an old flower-garden rendered it 
very attractive ; but at the rear the salt- 
marsh was in too close proximity, and 
about half an acre bordering on the back 
street was so overflowed at times by salt 
9 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

water that it would only afford a crop of 
marsh-grass. 

The neighborhood of this meadow was 
thought to be one of the drawbacks of the 
spot by many; but knowing that it was 
perfectly wholesome, and certainly beauti- 
ful, to us it was only an added advantage, 
so long as the gravelly knoll gave us so 
good a foundation for our dwelling. 
A fence of Our first problem, the fences, we deter- 

'wiilows, 

mined to deal with by planting Willows. 
The barren hillside was to be screened 
with Pines, and procuring and setting these 
was our first subject for consideration. 

10 



II 



PLANTING WILLOWS AND 
FINES 



" Willow ! in thy breezy moan 
I can hear a deeper tone ; 
Through thy leaves come whispering low 
Faint sweet songs of long ago — 
Willow, sighing willow ! " 

Mrs. Hemans. 

" Who liveth by the ragged pine, 
Foundeth an heroic line." 

Emerson. 




II 



HEN one has nearly half a mile omtiein- 
of boundary to define around 'g°roun(h. 
his four-acre lot, the question 
arises how it can be inclosed 
with the least expense and trouble, and in 
such a way as not to disfigure the grounds. 
With this problem we had now to deal. 

The front upon the main street, thanks 
to the sociable fashion of our day, it would 
be quite proper to leave open, with only 
such screen of shrubs and trees as we 
should decide upon when the house was 
built, and the lawn properly graded. Part 
of it was already well hedged in with an- 
cient bushes, which straggled about where 
the old house stood, in most admired dis- 
order. But all along Winter Street, as the 
road behind us is somewhat ambitiously 
designated, the fence was tumbling down, 
and the whole garden spot lay uncomfort- 
ably open to view, as well as to the cold 
13 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

We decide cast winds that blow across the meadow 
*wiih^s. from the sea. We decided that here a 
row of Willows would come in admirably, 
as there would be plenty of rich moist soil 
for the young trees to root in, and with 
such a protection the wind-swept garden 
would in time be warm and secluded, 
while the silvery foliage would be a har- 
monious setting for the emerald meadow 
and the sapphire stream. 

This idea we carried out the week after 
we made our purchase. A friendly far- 
mer neighbor, compassionating our folly in 
starting such an enterprise, but anxious to 
see what we would make out of the place, 
kindly offered to give us as many cuttings 
as we wanted ; so one bright day in June 
he appeared upon the scene with a cart- 
load of Willows, a crowbar, and a hatchet, 
and, with a man or two to help him, before 
night he had cut and driven firmly into 
holes, easily punched by the crowbar in 
the soft soil, some five hundred bare 
stakes, every one of which in a few weeks 
put forth a crop of roots and leaves. 

The stakes, sharpened at the end, were 
about three feet in length, one foot of 
14 



Planting Willows and Pines 

which was driven into the ground, znd Mowwe did 
firmly stamped into place. It was found 
better, in driving them, to have them set at 
an angle of about twenty degrees, with the 
tops pointing toward the south, so that 
the stems did not receive the full force of 
the midday and afternoon sun. We used 
the common White Willow (Sa/ix alba), 
which abounds along swampy roadsides 
everywhere in New England. 

These trees have all thriven well, though 
owing to the marsh being Salter in certain 
places than in others, some have grown 
less rapidly than their companions. The 
fear of the salt water led us into the error 
of planting one row of trees at first inside 
the fence, and at some distance from it, 
where the presence of Clover and English 
Grass showed that the top soil was fresh. 
Subsequently, when they were all well 
rooted, we removed them to the outside 
along the highway, where they now begin 
to make an agreeable shade and an effec- 
tive screen. The annual dumpings of sand 
made by the town along the edge of the 
road, to maintain its level, which con- 
stantly tends to sink into the marsh across 
IS 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

which it has been carefully built, seem to 
help the trees, which continue to send out 
surface-roots as the ground rises about 
them ; and though some of them during 
their first seasons had a sorry time of it 
in dry, hot weather, they ultimately pulled 
through, and are no longer sources of anx- 
iety. 
T/te barren The most cxposcd portion of the place 
being thus provided for, we turned our at- 
tention to the barren hillside, which was 
a pretty hopeless-looking spot for trees of 
any kind. This elevation, some forty feet 
high and running back nearly six hundred 
feet from the main street, seems to be the 
bank of some former water-way ; at least 
I like to fancy that the odd terraces, 
which break its otherwise even slope, re- 
present the gradual subsidence of some 
body of water which must once have filled 
the gorge, when the present meadow was 
an arm of the sea. Gravel and sand, 
mixed with moderate-sized cobblestones, 
are its constituent parts, nothing like a 
boulder having come so far down. We 
have often regretted that some of the no- 
ble rocks which abound on the other side 
i6 



Planting Willows and Pines 

of the street, farther up the former stream, 
were not on our hill to form a feature in 
our landscape-gardening, marked as they 
are with the scratches which show the 
grinding of some primeval glacier. 

Over the rough foundation of our hill a character 
thin soil has formed itself ; fairly deep on 
the level top where the plain begins, but 
constantly washed off down the sides into 
the swale below. It seems hardly possi- 
ble that trees can ever have grown here, 
nor are there the smallest traces of any in 
or upon the soil ; but here we resolved 
that trees should grow; and again the 
farmers mocked at such a wild idea, and 
looked forward with sombre satisfaction 
to our discomfiture. 

But how to set about it ? 

To plow the surface, unless we could a harmless 

, ,11 1 • • tumble. 

yoke a goat to the plow, seemed impossi- 
ble, since we had just seen a man and 
a horse and a dump-cart roll together, in 
a confused but unharmed heap, from the 
top to the bottom, on account of an incau- 
tious step off the level. Even if we could 
have plowed the ungrateful soil, of what 
use would it have been, since there was 
17 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

nothing to bring to the surface but stones ? 
Cultivation being apparently out of the 
question, the trees would have to take 
their chance, and a wretched chance, too, 
for the south shore of Massachusetts Bay 
is subject to long and severe droughts, 
and to several months of hot weather in 
the summer. 
A north But hcrc wc wcrc upheld by our author- 

M P^nes. ities. An excellent book on forestry gave 
us some consoling statistics, and later, our 
favorite horticultural journal was invalu- 
able in its suggestions. We found that in 
reforesting hills in France and Switzerland 
t-hat had been swept bare by avalanches, 
a northeast slope proved the most favor- 
able exposure for the growth of young 
Pines, and, if we had nothing else, we had 
plenty of north and east, with the winds 
thrown in ; so, if that was the sort of thing 
that they liked, why, bring on the Pines, 
and let them have all they want of it. 

But by the time we got round to this 
job, as the farmers say, the season for 
spring planting of Pines was over, and an 
exceptionally dry and burning summer was 
in full blast, and the very grass on the hill 
i8 



Planting Willows and Pines 

was crisped and dry. Our impatience, 
however, was too great to permit us to 
wait for another year to begin our experi- 
ment. We had read some accounts of 
August planting of Pines, and determined 
to have our little fling on the spot, and 
find out for ourselves whether it was a 
good time or not. 

So we waited, as anxiously as the pro- We hunt 
phet Elijah, for the first sign of rain, and 
when at last the brassy heavens veiled 
themselves in cloud about the middle of 
August, we started off after trees — not 
the pampered darlings of a nursery, used 
to water and rich soil, but the hardy road- 
side denizens of dry pastures and sand- 
hills. We picked out the driest and sandi- 
est spots to dig them from, so that if their 
roots discovered nothing to feed upon in 
their new locality, they would, from long 
habit, have got used to short commons, and 
could adapt themselves to the situation. 

Before going out we had the men dig 
holes over the surface of the side hill with 
a grub-hoe, banking up the thin soil at the 
lower side of the holes with sods, so as to 
-make little dams to retain the water ; in 

19 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

these holes we set the trees we selected, 
which were not over three feet high, but 
stocky and well rooted. When possible 
fVepiant we took up the dirt with them, keeping 
their roots moist, and well shaded in the 
cart, and no more were brought at a time 
than could be set in two or three hours. 
After they were all planted, with great 
labor and trouble, we gave our nursery 
a thorough watering, and then, except 
on two or three subsequent occasions, 
when things looked really desperate from 
drought, they were left to take their 
chance. Luckily that year the rains be- 
gan to fall soon after they were set, and 
the autumn was a very wet one, so that a 
good many of the little trees were living 
in the spring ; but another batch, set in 
the latter part of May the following year, 
owing possibly to the very heavy rains of 
1888 and 1889, did so much better, that 
we shall always be disposed to give the 
preference to spring planting in the fu- 
ture. 

Of some one hundred and fifty Pines set 
upon this barren northerly hillside, under 
these cruel conditions, about eighty sur- 
20 



Planting Willows and Pines 

vive, a few of which are still leading a pre- 
carious existence, while the greater part 
are flourishing bravely, making a fine show 
in winter against the snow. In summer 
they shade so completely into the unkempt 
green background of the hill that, unless 
seen in profile, they are barely visible, even 
when five feet high, and very bushy. Still Seeds are 

/-111 1 • 1 • disappoint- 

farther back we have tried settmg out very ing. 
small Pines, and have sown the ground in 
autumn with countless Pine-seeds, and 
nuts of all sorts, which come up satisfac- 
torily enough, and do bravely for a month 
or two, but suffer dreadfully in July and 
August. They are a fruitful source of 
anxiety and disappointment, because they 
cannot make up their minds whether to live 
or die. The young Oaks are especially 
trying in this respect, for when we have 
fairly given them up for lost, they thrust 
out a feeble little leaf and make a fresh 
effort at existence, but at this rate a mil- 
lennium will be too short for them to get 
their growth in. I have read somewhere 
that an Oak grew from an acorn in this 
commonwealth of Massachusetts, forty 
feet in fourteen years, but if these hillside 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

acorns achieve fourteen feet in forty years 
we shall feel we have not lived in vain. 
Howtomake "What do you do to make trees grow ? " 
reesgrow. ^ ^skcd an Englishman who was coaxing 
along a rebellious Butternut to some show 
of vigor. 

" Oh ! " said he, " I just talks to 'em, 
and tells 'em to grow, and they grow." 

Mindful of this advice, I do not fail to 
exhort these recreant acorns, but no 
teacher of a primary school ever had a 
worse time in getting a shoot out of a 
young idea, than do I out of this infant 
class of refractory nuts and seeds. 



Ill 

A BABY FOREST 



The seed has started, who can stay it ? See, 
The leaves are sprouting high above the ground. 
Already o'er the flowers its head ; the tree 
That rose beside it, and that on it frowned, 
Behold ! is but a small bush by its side. 
Still on ! it cannot stop ; its branches spread ; 
It looks o'er all the earth in giant pride. 

Jones Very. 



Ill 




^E know that mothers love best The uniove- 

'£ , , •! 1 1 • 1 liness of the 

* those children who give them hui. 
the most trouble, and it must be 
on some such principle that this 
barren hillside of ours wins our best af- 
fections ; for, as we cultivate its seemingly 
thankless surface, while it disappoints and 
resists our loving efforts, all the more 
there grows in us a tender comprehension 
of its hidden beauty, a wider sense of its 
possibilities, and a greater patience with 
the slow processes by which it is to be 
restored to vigor and productiveness. 

We sympathize with its struggle for self- 
adornment, poor, barren, ugly thing. The 
cold northern slope comes slowly to life, 
turned away as it lies from the fostering 
sunlight. When the plain and swale are 
bright with the hues of spring, the uncut 
grass upon its side is still brown and with- 
ered ; it seems to dread awakening from 
25 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

its winter sleep, but at last it begins to 
star itself over with blossoms of white 
Saxifrage, and anon it grows purple with 
Bird's-foot Violets, sending out in the sun- 
shine that soft, fleeting perfume which is 
a hint of the riper fragrance of their Eng- 
lish cousins. 
The flowers At this scason, too, the exquisite wild 
Jdornit. ° Columbine decks it with earrings of coral 
and gold, which the country children call 
meeting-houses from their steeple-shaped 
horns, and over it the all-pervading Daisy 
waves its white and yellow blossoms stur- 
dily in the wind, while the wild briers put 
forth their roses, and the Dog's-bane its 
fragrant cymes, till the Goldenrods and 
Asters come at last to hide its barrenness 
with their royal splendor. And all the 
while there are short, thin grasses, of ten- 
der greens and browns, clothing it humbly, 
while spots of vivid emerald moss indicate 
the presence of hidden rivulets that feed 
a living spring that lies at its foot. 

In this spring is the possibility of a 

water garden, of which there is already a 

beginning. All summer long you can see 

shining there the blue eyes of great For- 

26 



A Baby Forest 



get-me-nots, the seeds of whose forefathers Forget-j>ie- 
were brought, long ago, from stately Fon- "pratice!" 
tainebleau by a gentle artist, who planted 
them by his own brookside, whence they 
have overrun and made famous the Hing- 
ham Meadows, their bright blossoms, like 
scattered fragments of the sky, gleaming 
among the rushes, and affording a valu- 
able industry to the small boys who sell 
them at the railway station as you pass. 
In addition to these continuously bloom- 
ing flowers, there are Pussy Willows and 
white Violets in the spring, and in the late 
summer the Arrowhead lifts its sculptur- 
esque blossom and fine outlined leaf from 
the water, and the Cardinal-flower uprears 
its scarlet spikes amid the blossoms of 
stately grasses. Some day we hope to see 
a Pond Lily asleep upon its surface, and 
if the Lotus-flower would but brook our 
rigorous winters, we should add one to the 
collection. 

At the foot of the hill, at each end, is a stray la- 
clump of White Birches, ladies of the 
woods that have strayed from their home, 
and lost themselves on this waste, and 
rustle their thin leaves timorously, bend- 
27 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

ing their slender white stems as the sea- 
blasts strike them. Now that we have 
stopped mowing and pasturing, we find 
clumps of Bayberry and Chokecherry 
bushes coming up under the tumble-down 
old rail-fences between us and our neigh- 
bors, so that these last are already high 
enough to shade the boys when, tired and 
hot with play, they throw themselves upon 
the ground under their grateful protection. 
A tennis Por ou tlic summit of the hill there is level 

court on the 

hill- space enough, inside our line, for a tennis- 

court, from which you can look for a mile 
across the meadow to the tree-clad hills 
beyond, and the clustered houses and 
masts of the harbor, half-buried in trees, 
and seek for the blue line upon the high 
horizon that indicates the sea. 

Straggling paths, worn by careless feet, 
lead up the hillside in those pleasant, 
meandering ways that indicate the foot of 
man, and, in imagination, we see them 
shaded by the Birches and Pines that we 
have hopefully planted along the borders ; 
for, in moving our trees with the surround- 
ing sod, we usually brought along these 
close companions ; the Pines and Birches 
28 



A Baby Forest 



of Nature. 



being so married, in most instances, that 
it seemed a cruelty to separate them. 

Hope and faith are qualities that find 
splendid exercise in tree-planting, and no 
pursuit can be more unselfish ; for, as we 
watch the tardy growth of our plantations, 
it is with the stern conviction that other 
eyes than ours will see the waving of tree- 
tops above them, and that far younger feet 
will tread the fragrant woodland ways 
when they are at last carpeted with Pine- 
needles. It is by this spirit that we be- 
come one with Nature, sharing humbly in Thepatience 
her patience, in her vast unending plans, 
in her bountiful provision for the future. 
What better boon to the race can a man 
leave than a wood that he has planted, in 
which a future generation may walk and 
bless his name ? Or, if the name be for- 
gotten, there shall abide the forest-bless- 
ing, ever beneficent, the mother of springs 
that fertilize the plain, a shelter to the 
weary, a delight of the eye, a source alike 
of profit and pleasure while it endures. 

We have friends who scoff when we 
take them to walk in our forest and beg 
them not to step on the Oaks ; but, to us, 
29 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

these tiny seedlings, so feeble and unim- 
portant, are personalities that we have 
cherished through successive seasons, 
feeding them when hungry, giving drink 
The suffer- whcn dry, grieving when their tender 
ymnfodts. Icavcs, scorchcd by too fierce a sun, with- 
ered and fell, and rejoicing when, under 
the cool rains of September, their little 
bare stems put forth fresh crowns of leaf- 
buds. Much comfort can be taken in the 
fact that an Oak once rooted will not 
wholly perish, but some day conquer even 
the most obdurate of soils. Like good 
seed sown in the heart of a child, the 
storms and sunshine of the world may 
seem for a time to wither the plant to the 
ground, but in the end the beauty and 
power of deep-rooted character will pre- 
vail and bear fruit. 

We have in our experiments endeavored 
to make use of such materials as lay at 
hand, though well aware that nurseries and 
gardens could have helped us on our way 
more rapidly. But trees, if purchased, 
are expensive luxuries, and our object has 
been partly to see what can be done with- 
out much money, and with only a moder- 

30 



A Baby Forest 



ate amount of labor. Our experience has Transplant- 

ing- more 

shown us, what the books on forestry told satisfactory 

, , . . , . 1 thansoitnng. 

US in the beginning, that sowing seeds 
and nuts is far less satisfactory than trans- 
planting small trees ; but we have had the 
entertainment of proving their statements 
for ourselves, and find our compensation in 
such trifling results as we have achieved. 
The Pine seeds, which we shook from the 
cones in the autumn, and planted before 
they had time to dry, came up profusely 
enough in little clusters, but so tiny and 
weak, that it is wonderful that they are 
ever discovered even in the thin grass of 
the hillside, which we leave near them to 
afford shade. They make, under these 
conditions, a sturdy little growth so long 
as the weather is cool and moist, but are 
apt to disappear altogether in the month 
of July. Any small tree, that one can 
pull up by a wayside, will make better re- 
turns for a little attention than these slow- 
growing mites from seeds. 

Such White Birch seed as we have sown, 

either because we did not know when to 

gather it, or whether it came from the 

wrong tree, has failed to come up at all ; 

31 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

but in the sandiest and most uncomfort- 
able part of the hill we find little seed- 
lings that have come up of themselves 
from the trees at the foot, so that we are 
fain to confess that Nature understands 
her business better than we do. 
Experience The vcrv Small Pines, a few inches high, 

TVttll tints , ■' ' ° ' 

and seeds, of which we havc set a large number on 
the rear of the hill, do not grow as well as 
the larger ones, and are more apt to die. 
So far our experience leads us to prefer 
good-sized trees of all kinds for transplant- 
ing, rather than small ones, the larger tree 
seeming to have more vitality to come and 
go upon until new roots are formed, and 
it has become adapted to its new condi- 
tions. 

We have planted various kinds of acorns 
in great profusion, but the Mossy-cup and 
the Chestnut Oak seem to thrive best in 
this waterless soil. The White and Red 
Oaks seem to require enriching to hold 
their own at all, and Maple seedlings, 
which come up promptly, yield to the first 
drought, though very small transplanted 
trees live on. Hickories, though slow in 
growth, are not vanquished by the con- 
32 



A Baby Forest 



ditions, and little yearling Chestnuts, trans- 
planted and dug about, flourish bravely. 

From a friend in town, whose English Planting 
Walnut-tree has borne profusely after the 
recent warm winters, we have obtained 
fresh nuts, which, promptly set, have ger- 
minated and given us fine little shoots in 
one season. This tree is a more rapid 
grower than any of our native nut-trees, 
and so far has stood the winters, but we 
have had no weather below zero here 
since 1887, and cannot answer for the ef- 
fect of an old-fashioned season. The field- 
mice have a great predilection for them, 
and gnawed our largest one down to the 
root a year ago, but it came up again in 
the spring with redoubled vigor, and made 
up for lost time. 

Small Black Birches, dug up by the Remdu. 
roadside, and put into holes prepared for 
them in the side of the hill, have thriven 
without much attention, and make a fa- 
vorable growth ; but some Ailanthus-trees 
from a nursery, in spite of Horace Gree- 
ley, have refused to do anything at all. In 
the swale at the foot of the hill, where the 
soil is deep and moist, all trees flourish. 

33 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

English Oaks grow rapidly from acorns, 
and we have a fine group of Chestnuts, 
transplanted when fifteen feet high, that 
grow well after being cut back sternly 
when set. Though much beset by insects, 
they are now firmly established, having 
been planted in the autumn of 1888. In 
this same moist, rich soil we have also had 
very good success with that difficult tree 
to move, the Hemlock ; and the Tulip-tree 
and the Mulberry also flourish, though 
the tender young branches of the latter 
suffered after the last two warm winters, 
dying back badly. 
ciitnbirg To gct all this young family started, 

fafids^tf:^' as may be imagined, took a great deal of 
lungs. time, and much subsequent attention, one 

favorable result of which is that from con- 
stant clambering up the steep hill, which 
was at first a breathless piece of business, 
our lungs have developed to such a de- 
gree that we are disposed to recommend 
the cultivation of a forest on a slope to all 
such as, like Hamlet, are " fat and scant 
of breath," for the fine stimulus it proves 
to the action of the heart. 



34 



IV 
CLEARING UP 



The dense hard passage is blind and stifled, 
That crawls by a track none turn to climb 
To the strait waste place that the years have 
rifled 
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of 
Time ; 
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken ; 

The rocks are left when he wastes the plain ; 
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, 
These remaia 

Swinburne. 



IV 




S " trees will grow while one 
sleeps," according to the old 
adage, we made planting our 
first business, and left setting 
the place in order to come later, for 
it seemed to promise an indefinite job, 
everything having gone more or less to 
rack and ruin during its period of aban- 
donment and desolation. 

The forlornness of an old, neglected a forlorn 

r • 1 1 • 1 !• • r old/arm. 

farm is largely owmg to the condition of 
its trees and shrubs, which, being left to 
themselves, take on a tumble-down, half- 
dead look that often belies their real con- 
dition. A few decayed trees bring all the 
others into disrepute, like a grog-shop in 
an otherwise respectable neighborhood, 
and untrimmed shrubs are as unbecoming 
as unkempt hair. 

When we came to examine matters at 
Overlea, as we named our acquisition, from 

37 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

its command of the meadow, we found 
that a good sweeping and dusting would 
do wonders for it, and with that enthusi- 
asm for setting to rights inborn in the 
New England breast, we prepared for a 
grand redding up. 

While the grading of the knoll was go- 
ing on preparatory to building the house, 
our factotum, appropriately named Blos- 
som, since his function was to adorn the 
place, was busily employed in removing 
all the unsightly dead limbs from among 
the live ones, and in hewing down such 
old Pear and Apple trunks as proved 
hopeless. 
A corduroy The logs and branches were dragged 

road. f , • , , 

away to the wettest place in the meadow 
at the back of the knoll, and transformed 
into a corduroy road, by which one could 
pass dry-shod out into the rear street. 
This floating rubbish, supported by the 
tangled grass on the marsh, formed a 
foundation upon which, after inserting a 
plank water-way at the bottom, for the 
ebb and flow of the tide, we subsequently 
built a substantial carriage-road of stones 
38 



Clearing Up 

and gravel, which now affords a back en- 
trance to the stable and kitchens. 

The palings of the fence were removed 
for kindlings, but the posts and rails were 
left to form a slight boundary until the 
hedges and tree rows should be fairly- 
established ; the straggling shrubs were 
trimmed into better shape, the Box-arbor 
clipped and cleared of weeds, trailing 
vines were taught once more the use of 
a trellis, and the grass was mown and 
raked clean of the last year's rowan. 

Fierce war was made upon the Bur- wedobat- 
dock and Mint and Horse-radish that had weTJs.' 
squatted everywhere on the land ; load 
after load of the accumulated rubbish of 
years was buried under the corduroy road, 
and hidden from view with gravel ; the 
Pear-trees were carefully pruned and tied 
up, and the old Grape trellis stiffened with 
new posts and lattices. 

When all this was done, and it was no 
brief job, the place took on a civilized air 
truly surprising, but, like the boy's wash- 
ing his face, which cost his father a thou- 
sand dollars, the felling of the first ragged 

39 



knoll. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

old tree was an entering wedge of im- 
provements that found no end. 

The clearing up revealed unsuspected 
beauties and possibilities in the old place, 
and at the end of it we had taken an ac- 
count of stock, and were aware that we 
had become owners of a treasure-house of 
enjoyments. But the charms and wealth 
of that old garden are " another story," 
which remains to be told later. 
Grading the While all this Spring and fall cleaning 
was going on, the heavy labor of grading 
was in progress. Teams and men were 
coming and going, heavy scrapers were 
plowing part of the little knoll down into 
the valley, and loads of gravel were being 
dumped to bring the slopes into proper 
form, the surface soil having been first 
removed to cover the future lawn. Week 
by week the work went on, till the very 
landscape changed its contours, as the re- 
moval of the crown of the knoll threw 
open to view, from the sidewalk, the fine 
stretch of green meadow and blue stream, 
once hidden from view by its cone. 

When our much interested critics found 
that we had chosen the site for our dwell- 
40 



Clearing Up 

ing in an unexpected part of the grounds, 
their murmurs again reached our ears. 

"Why in the world don't the doctor Advkefrom 
build up on top of the hill, where he can 
see everything, and be among neighbors ?" 
sang half the chorus. 

" If I had a lot of big trees like those 
Elums I 'd get the good of 'em, and put 
my new house on the old cellar," echoed 
the antiphonal. 

" Never can make anything better 'n a 
Shumack-bush grow in that gravel-pit," 
shouted they all together. 

" Well, perhaps he knows what he 's 
about," would interpose some friendly 
voice ; " but it would n't be my way, any- 
how. He '11 find out, come to plantin', 
that he 's got to have soil, even for a door- 
yard." 

When it came to building the founda- We are like 
tions, their distance from the highway and His 
seemed inordinate to most of these critics, 
but now and then we were reproached by 
the more ambitious for not leaving front 
enough. In fine, we came to be in full 
sympathy with the Old Man and His Ass 
of the fable ; but being luckier than he in 
41 



Ass. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

having a mind of our own, we did not end 
by pitching house and all into the water, 
as we might have been tempted to do 
from the multitude of counselors, in which, 
in spite of Solomon, there is not always 
wisdom. 

Our firm conviction was that the hill, 
in spite of the commanding view toward 
the north, was too bleak and exposed a 
position to be pleasant for an all-the- 
year-round home ; it was also too near 
the neighbors' lines, and too remote from 
orchard and garden. 
Conversion On the Other hand, tempting as the 

of the crit- ,_,, . , 

ics. great Jilms certamly were on a hot sum- 

mer day, the lot at that end of the farm 
was quite too narrow for a house and 
stable such as we required. The knoll, 
though limited in area, gave us plenty of 
elbow-room, and from its elevation we over- 
looked the grassy swale on one side, with 
the hill for a background, and northward 
could view the ever-changing tints of the 
meadow, behind the gardens and the fruit- 
trees. Experience has confirmed the wis- 
dom of our choice, and, in justice to our 
advisers, I will say that they now hand- 
42 



Clearing Up 

somely admit that, though they " did n't 
think much of the doctor's ch'ice, to begin 
with," they are now convinced that " he 
has got about the likeHest lot on the 
street." 

People question us about our Willows, Are the wu- 
and ask whether we are to make a hedge of /frJa/? ^" 
them or allow them to grow up into trees. 
" If you allow the Willow-trees to grow 
up," they ask, "won't they shut off all 
your view ? and if you don't allow them 
to, won't the labor and trouble of cutting 
them back every year be serious ? " 

We do mean to let them grow into trees 
at their own sweet will, at least for the 
present. The knoll is so high, and the 
slope of the ground, from the foot of it to 
the edge of the place, so decided, that our 
veranda -floor is some twenty -five feet 
above the level where the Willows are set, 
so that they can grow for some years to 
come without becoming an annoyance. 
They are also quite a long distance away, 
as the line runs diagonally between us and 
the meadow. Should they ever become 
a serious obstruction, polling once in five 
years, we think, will keep them where we 
43 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

want them, as from our elevation we can 
look directly over the top of a very tall old 
Apple-tree which stands at the foot of the 
slope near the house, and a Willow in the 
distance will have to be quite a tree to be 
really troublesome. A vista cut here and 
there in the line will really enhance the 
charm of the prospect, but at present they 
are not more than fifteen feet high. 

Another inquiry has been made with 

regard to the preparation of the soil on 

the hill for the Pines, 

ThePii- Unfortunately, we did nothing in the 

WeTso/our Way of making a bed for them beyond the 

forest. process I have described. No doubt, 

they would have fared much better for a 

little feeding, and more of them would 

have lived, but the hill was very steep and 

hard to get at, even with a wheelbarrow ; 

and, besides, we had no soil to spare, for 

we needed everything we could get for 

the lawn, and did not care to buy any for 

so doubtful an enterprise. We therefore 

tried our experiment under the sternest 

conditions. However, those tiny Pilgrim 

Fathers of the future forest stood the trial 

like little men. Some of them, it is true, 

44 



Clearing Up 

died of consumption, and some of fever ; 
but the survivors are growing tall and 
stout on their poor pickings, and will do 
us credit yet. 

There is one of them, nicknamed Epis- rke history 
copus, from its birthplace in the church ptef/^'^°' 
lot, which is a beautiful illustration of 
that fable called Nature and Education, 
in " Evenings at Home," a book which 
was the delight of the childhood of a pre- 
vious generation, and an infinite bore to 
the present advanced infant. 

I spied the poor thing one day hanging 
by one root to the side of a sandhill, which 
was being graded to a smooth slope, and 
asked the men who were working there to 
let me have it. Though much ridiculed 
for its shapeless and unpromising aspect, 
it was given a comfortable shelf pretty 
well down on the slope, and coaxed to 
hold its head up by various devices. Un- 
used to kind treatment, this wayside waif, 
which had got used to growing nearly up- 
side down, hung its head and sidled up 
against the hill, and seemed to find its 
branches as much in its way as the legs 
and arms of a guttersnipe in a parlor ; but 
45 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

time and training, and the neighborhood 
of Boston have their influence even on a 
Pine, and that clerical tree is r\OYJ a very 
Bishop in erectness and dignity, having 
been lopped and pruned and tied to stakes, 
till it puts the most symmetrical of the 
other Pines to shame by the vigor of its 
development, proving that if anything can 
" beat Nature " it is Education. 

The consolation of having a limited 
number of trees is that each one acquires 
an individuality, and their owner gets to 
know them as a shepherd does his flock. 
I wish every one could learn the way in 
which these little growing things take hold 
of one's interest, and people life in the 
country, and that this pursuit could be 
taught to children as a branch of their 
education. 
riie plant- It is the custom in some of our high- 
^bysciwoi" schools for the graduating class to plant a 
and colleges. ^^^^ -^^ ^j^^ neighborhood of the school- 
house and for a long period it has been 
the time-honored custom of universities 
to set out a vine in commencement week, 
to commemorate the class that is leaving 
college. 

46 



Clearing Up 

During a visit last summer to an east- 
ern town, my attention was called to the 
Ampelopsis, each vine labeled with the 
date of the class cut in one of the stones 
of the foundation of the college chapel, 
near which the plants were set, and it was 
melancholy to see how forlorn and small 
many of them were, and how others had 
died completely for lack of attention. The 
same may be said of numbers of the pitiful 
little Maples and Elms that huddle around 
the unpicturesque and bare high-school 
buildings in some parts of New England, 
which really should by this time be amply 
shaded if a proper attention had been paid 
to the young trees when set out. 

It strikes me that a radical change a change 
should be made in the time of planting ^«4?. 
these commemorative trees and vines. 
Instead of setting them out at the close 
of its career, every class should on enter- 
ing the school or university erect its 
growing monument, and devote its best 
energies during the four years of school 
or college life to having its vine or its tree 
beat the record in growth and vigor. In 
this way, if one specimen died another 
47 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

could be planted, that the class might be 
sure of a memorial, while yearly a com- 
mittee should be appointed to attend to 
the plant, and a small subscription be 
levied on each member of the class for 
proper fertilizers and cultivation. 
Boys should If the personal attention of the boys 
toTakVln could bc givcn to the subject, if they 
forestry"' would themsclvcs dig about and enrich 
and prune what they had planted, and 
would take pride in it, the effect would 
be good in awakening in their minds an 
interest in the growth of plants and trees ; 
and some slight knowledge might be ac- 
quired of climatic and soil conditions, 
while a hint might be given to them of 
one of the best and purest pleasures 
which is within the grasp of man. 

In this way could be instilled into the 
rising generation an interest in forestry, 
that might in time bear fruit in greater 
care for this property of the nation. 
Among the books of reference in schools 
some should be supplied which treat of 
the proper management of growing things, 
so that the youths and maidens could 
study the subject for themselves. If, at 
48 



Clearing Up 

the end of each year or four years, some 
slight reward, such as a simple medal or 
even an honorable mention, could be 
awarded to that plant or tree which had 
made any surprising growth, it might still 
further stimulate an interest among the 
young people in this most beautiful and 
useful work. If masters of schools and 
professors of colleges would use their in- 
fluence to bring about this change as 
speedily as possible, it could not fail to 
do good to the youths themselves, and 
would replace with vigorous trees and 
vines the usually melancholy specimens 
which many classes now leave behind 
them as their monument. 

The forester of ever so minute a wood The forest- 
has a fund of enjoyment on his plantation "meJt"'^''^ 
that no unlimited order to the best of 
landscape gardeners can ever give him. It 
is a fine spiritual exercise to bring the mind 
into sympathy with inferior organisms, 
and when one has fairly learned to love 
anything so stubborn and irresponsive as 
a tree, he has gained a step in mental de- 
velopment, even beyond that point won 
49 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

by a sympathetic understanding of his 
brother man. 
A /lower However fond one may be of a flower 

^terelting garden, I doubt if it ever yields quite so 
den ^ frees. Sturdy a Satisfaction as the culture of 
trees. It is the difference between bring- 
ing up a girl and a boy, — one all light, 
color, sweetness, a thing to be cherished 
and tenderly sheltered and nurtured ; the 
other less outwardly winning, more obsti- 
nate in development, more independent 
and manly in habit, but more worth while ; 
a thing of positive pecuniary value when 
well grown ; and formed, when symmetry 
and breadth are fully attained, to be of 
service in sheltering the weak and weary 
who seek protection in what Mrs. Gamp 
would call " this wale." 
SO 



V 



ON THE PERVERSITY OF 
CERTAIN TREES 



My wind has turned to bitter north, 
That was so soft a south before ; 

My sky, that shone so sunny bright, 
With foggy gloom is clouded o'er. 

Arthur Hugh Clough. 




V 



conscience would lead me to Apology due 

, , , to my trees. 

make an apology to my tree- 
nurslings for having called them 
stubborn and irresponsive, when 
they have in many instances given me so 
much satisfaction ; but as I feel that it is 
necessary to be as honest about mistakes 
as about successes, in order to render these 
records truly valuable, I feel it my duty — 
though it is almost as bad as betraying a 
domestic secret — to admit that they have 
been a trial. And that people may not 
be led away into thinking a tree nursery 
any freer from failings than a child nurs- 
ery, I must tell the painful as well as the 
charming facts about them. 

No one knows better than I how much TJie/reak- 
some of the more satisfactory among them ^LmVlf 
will do for one under kind treatment, but, 
all the same, I must reluctantly maintain 
that many of them are freakish and dis- 

53 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

appointing ; not, perhaps, so much from 
their inherent wickedness, as from the 
baneful influences of the world outside, the 
flirtations with insects of which they are 
capable, their predilection for ornament- 
ing themselves with bright colored fungus 
growths which check their development, 
a perverseness about living, even when 
given the very best advantages, only par- 
alleled by those Chinese servants who 
go and kill themselves if their master 
speaks sharply to them ; and, above all, a 
stubbornness about adapting themselves 
to new conditions as great as that of a 
trueborn Briton. 
A tree the Your trcc IS the true conservative, and 

true con- ..... 

servative. Will msist upon its own Way quite as un- 
reasonably as a human being, even when 
you are sure you know what is better for 
it than it does itself. It is as hard to 
bring it to a new way of living as it is to 
bring about a constitutional amendment. 
If there is a spot where you do not want 
a tree to grow, notably a garden bed or 
your potato patch, there it will insist on 
coming up and making itself at home ; 
but, take up this interloper and put it in a 
54 



On the Perversity of Certain Trees 

proper place, where you want it, and, ten 
to one, it will sulk and defy you. 

One's favorites show in extreme youth huofui- 

., , regulated 

a propensity to come in contact with cows character. 
horns and the jackknives of mischievous 
boys, that is another proof of ill-regulated 
character. They let their top-buds perish 
in the most careless way, and put out two 
leaders instead of one before you know it ; 
they grow unevenly, they make themselves 
untidy with absurd little leaves up and 
down their stems, with a vague idea of 
keeping the sun off their trunks. One 
has a constant struggle with evergreens to 
keep their lower limbs in condition ; they 
always prefer to go barefooted. Indeed, 
I call one Norway Spruce I know of Sock- 
less Jerry, on account of this very failing. 

There is a crying instance of depravity a depraved 
in a moderate-sized Whte Ash on our ^'''*'^'^- 
lawn, which ought to be a stately tree by 
this time, for a neighbor tells us it has 
been growing there for forty years. Every 
spring it puts out a magnificent crop of 
new shoots, and we congratulate our- 
selves that at last it has really made up 
its mind to go ahead and reward us for 
55 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

all the digging around and high feeding 
we have given it ; but in late June omi- 
nous yellow spots appear upon the leaves, 
great orange-colored excrescences disfig- 
ure the young shoots, and the first thing 
we know they are all shriveled and dying, 
and the ground underneath it is strewn 
with blackened leaves. Later it pulls it- 
self together and gets out a feeble crop of 
young sprouts, just enough to enable it to 
hold its own from year to year, but which 
seem to add almost nothing to its girth, 
and very little to its height. 

Now, can any one tell me what is the 
proper punishment for that ? 
Hemlocks Of the pcrvcrsity of Hemlocks I could 
v^rse. write a volume. I knew something of 

their waywardness in the State of Maine, 
but even in Massachusetts, where every- 
thing is regul^ed by law, they show no 
higher sense of duty. 

In vain do you coax along a beautiful 
little tree, carefully raised in a nursery 
till it has a fine ball of roots, to live and 
thrive for several seasons ; at the end of 
that time you find it in the spring yellow 
and brown and bare, with every sign of 
56 



On the Perversity of Certain Trees 

premature decay about it. In a clump 
they may condescend to grow, or on a hill, 
but if you don't want a clump, or a hill on 
the lawn, what then ? 

Any one who has ever set his affections Misconduct 

1 • r o/other 

on a Peach orchard knows somethmg of trees. 
the shameless coquetry of its behavior ; 
and in the course of these chapters I 
shall be compelled to record instances of 
misconduct even in the most innocent and 
carefully brought up trees as well as in 
the wild and unsophisticated ones. Even 
the common White Birch, which will live 
anywhere and everywhere, and thrive on 
a sandbank, goes and gets itself eaten up 
with rosebugs the minute we try to uti- 
lize it on a lawn. Lombardy Poplars, too, 
in spite of much specious promising, be- 
have shamefully; and I have known a 
Catalpa to grow undaunted in an inclo- 
sure for twenty years and then succumb in 
a cowardly way to one cold winter. The 
fact is, though I am loath to say it, as a 
class you cannot absolutely depend upon 
trees, and when you say that — why, you 
say everything ! 

I have also something to add concern- 
57 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

Concernmg ing our grovc of Chestnut-trecs, that were 
cTesT>"uis. taken from a plantation of trees in our 
neighborliood, which had been made some 
years ago, on one of the neglected places 
hereabout. They had been set out when 
small, and left to take their chances with- 
out cultivation for certainly ten years. 
How much they had received when very 
young I cannot say, for their gardener has 
long since moved away. When we got 
them they were some three inches in di- 
ameter one foot from the ground, and 
slim and stately, with fairly good roots, 
but not like those of frequently moved 
nursery trees. We topped them when 
they were set in the autumn, and as they 
did not seem very vigorous, the next year 
we cut them back very severely, of differ- 
ent lengths, as an experiment. Some of 
them we left ten feet high, and one of 
them which had poor roots and looked 
sickly we cut down to within two feet of 
the ground. 

Last summer they all put out vigorous 

tops with enormous leaves, but they are 

much beset by the aphis, which makes 

havoc with the first growth, and later by 

58 



On the Perversity of Certain Trees 

the insatiable rosechafer; yet, in spite of 
these drawbacks, they thrive in the rich 
deep soil of the swale, sheltered by the 
hill from the sun and the burning south- 
west winds. They are planted about fif- 
teen feet apart, as we thought they would 
do better in close company, and they can 
be trimmed out when they are larger if it 
seems desirable. Smaller ones are set on 
the hillside, where they seem to flourish, 
and some future generation may see our 
hillside, like those noble slopes of the 
Connecticut valley, waving with their 
splendid foliage. 

But all these trees give us care and information 

" Coynes too 

trouble, and much disappomtment, like late. 
everything on which one's heart is set, 
and then we are always finding out things 
just too late, for we constantly discover in 
our reading articles published the day 
after the fair, which show us how much 
better we might have done had we had 
the information a year or two earlier. In 
fact we have reason to think ourselves 
among those 

Mountainous minds that were awake too soon, 
Or else their brethren slept too late, 

59 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



Knmvledge 
7vmtld have 
induced dis- 



Gifts frovi 
kindly 
friends. 



for no sooner do we evolve an idea and 
put it in practice, than at every turn the 
public press is crammed with views on this 
very subject which it has never seen fit 
to express previously. Hinc illce lacrimce. 

Had all that we discovered later in print 
been within our grasp in the beginning, 
had modern ideas been fairly abroad, how 
much easier everything would have been ! 
But, also, how afraid we should have been 
to undertake anything, having learned 
thus that we ought never to build without 
a landscape architect, never to plant with- 
out the advice of an experienced land- 
scape gardener, never to suffer from mis- 
takes that could so easily be avoided by 
proper appeals to a professional ! But all 
this wisdom might as well have come in 
the next century as just a year too late, 
and so here we are, with all our blood 
upon our heads, because we chanced to 
dig our cellar and make our contract a 
year or two before a certain eminent den- 
drological journal was born. 

As it was, we went to some scientific 
neighbors, who had done the same thing 
we were doing thirty years before with 
60 



On the Perversity of Certain Trees 

very distinguished success ; and some of 
them gave us advice, and others gave us 
trees, which were even more to the pur- 
pose; and they kindly encouraged our 
efforts, and took an interest in what we 
were doing that sustained and cheered us 
on our way. 

No one's experience, either in books or ive try o»r 
in real life, proves to be exactly like our "^mt^^"^^' 
own, so that we feel that we have had the 
benefit of an original experiment. Only 
time can fully reveal where our mistakes 
lie, for it alone can show whether we have 
planted not wisely or too well. 
6i 



VI 

THE WRECK OF AN ANCIENT 
GARDEN 



A brave old house 1 a garden full of bees, 
Large dropping poppies, and queen holly- 
hocks, 
"With butterflies for crowns, — tree peonies, 
And pinks and goldilocks. 

Jean Ingelow. 



VI 




EXT to our tree garden came a wonder- 
the old-fashioned flower garden 
as an object of care and inter- 
est in the renovation of the 
place, and here we met with many agree- 
able surprises ; so that we were perpetu- 
ally reminded of the " Swiss Family Rob- 
inson," who, when they went ashore on 
their desert island, found all they needed 
to make them comfortable on the wreck, 
from which, luckily, they were able to 
help themselves before the old hulk went 
to pieces. After that, every little thing 
which was quite indispensable came out 
of a wonderful bag that belonged to the 
worthy mother. 

Since we landed upon the barren waste 
of this abandoned farm, we have often had 
reason to compare the old house-lot with 
the ship, and the front yard with the moth- 
er's bag, for a number of trees and shrubs 
65 



ne Rescue of an Old Place 

have been forthcoming from the one, 
while the other has proved an inexliausti- 
ble resource, not only for our own, but 
other people's gardens. 
Miss Betsy For, once upon a time, in the old house 

and Miss ... 

Peggy. which IS now no more, there dwelt two 

dear old ladies who took great pride in 
their garden, and stocked it well with all 
the best fliowers of their day, and from it 
came bulbs and cuttings of roses, and 
roots of perennials, that still help to make 
beautiful the ancient gardens of this fine 
old town. They were women of refine- 
ment and learning, much respected and 
beloved, and the older people still warmly 
recall Miss Betsy and Miss Peggy, and 
the days when the old house was always 
a sunny and cheerful resort. After the 
place was abandoned and unoccupied for 
many years, people felt at liberty to come 
and help themselves to slips of the shrubs 
and to roots of the old plants, so that one 
might hardly hope to find anything of 
value still existing there ; but when we 
came to clear away the rubbish, we were 
surprised to find what a tenacious hold 
the occupants had of the soil, so that, as 
66 



The Wreck of an Ancient Garden 

the spring and summer months sped by, 
we were constantly surprised and charmed 
to find, in unexpected places, some shrub 
or flower that clung to its old haunts, and, 
half-hidden from the eye, bloomed away 
its sweet life heedless of observers. 

Along: an uneven old wall that had sup- Miss Seisy's 

r 1 1 XII Garden. 

ported the terrace of the house, I had a 
bed dug, into which I transplanted such 
bulbs and roots as would consent to be 
torn from their original homes. This bed 
I call Miss Betsy's Garden, for I am quite 
sure that in old times that gentle soul 
must have watched and tended her favo- 
rites by this same sunny wall. There is 
one prim little Columbine which wears a 
minutely fluted lavender cap that I associ- 
ate with her, and always call by her name. 
The flowers that come up in Miss Betsy's 
Garden are all simple and homely, but to 
me their quaint familiar faces are more 
appealing than the far showier and splen- 
did blooms of to-day. 

Thev must have family records of inter- Somehigh- 

rx^i bred old 

est, these ladylike old blossoms. Ihose blossoms. 
yellow Daffodils, with their long green 
ribbons, have nestled up against that wall 
67 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

till, no doubt, they regard it as an ancient 
castle, of which they are the chatelaines ; 
and I am sure that dignified Narcissus 
must have a history. There is a sweet 
A fragrant Junc Honeysucklc straggling there which 
^'"^' breathes an old-time fragrance, and the 

tiny petals of the pale pink Bridal Rose 
which flutters beside it have the very tint 
of soft color one sees in the cheek of an 
ancient maiden. A wild Clematis seems to 
grow out of the wall itself, — I have never 
been able to find its root, — and every 
fall a Prince's-feather waves its tall plume 
where once it danced with a Lady's-slip- 
per. The Tansies have all degenerated 
into Lady's-delights, and the Hollyhocks 
come up single, but here they grow and 
blossom beside a pendulous Forsythia, 
the seed of which was, no doubt, sown by 
some passing bird, for it is not, I think, 
one of the older shrubs in this village. 
Flowers in The rest of the garden is perfectly 
^'^^' formless and wild. Nothing has been 
done to the old part of the farm, except to 
clean away the weeds and sticks that en- 
cumbered it, and the old plants have grown 
lank and tall along the fence and under 
68 



77?^ Wreck of an Ancient Garden 

the heavy shade of the trees. But here 
in the spring the ground is blue and fra- 
grant with hardy English Violets, that fill sweet 
the air with perfume and blossom long '""'^^*'- 
before even the native White Violet, which 
leads the way among our New England 
flowers ; and wherever you walk you come 
upon a Tulip, or a Star of Bethlehem, or 
a feeble Crocus choked by the strong 
grasses, and cheery Daffys are wagging 
their golden heads in sheltered spots, and 
later there are to be seen groups of sculptu- 
resque Narcissus shining whitely under the 
shrubbery, " like a good deed in a naughty 
world." The Flowering Almond sends 
up spikes of bloom ; the Periwinkle, white 
and blue, hides among its shining leaves, 
while the Moneywort has strayed away 
from the garden and made of itself a nui- 
sance in the orchard, where it threatens 
to root out everything else. There also 
are great clumps of the giant Solomon's 
Seal in shady nooks, where they grow to 
wondrous size. 

And the Flower o' the Quince is a rare shrubs in 
sight m the sprmgtime, as its rosy flush 
mantles the scraggy old trees which are 
69 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

good for little but blossoms. There is a 
huge Viburnum bush in the orchard which 
is a snowy mass in May, when the Snow- 
berry buds are showing their little pink 
heads against the fence, where they strug- 
gle with the wild Raspberry bushes which 
make their life burdensome to them ; and 
in places through the grass, where once a 
well kept Strawberry patch existed, are to 
be found the white blossoms of a few sur- 
vivors mightier than their conquerors. 
A clump of In a low, neglected spot is a clump of 
those old orange-colored Lilies that used 
always to abound in country gardens, for 
once established they could never be 
rooted out ; and these, undiscouraged by 
frequent mowings, bloom and spread in 
unchecked luxuriance. 

There are Lilacs, purple, white and Per- 
sian, in profusion, and the Mock Orange 
and Spiraeas all have their turn as the 
seasons go round. One White Lilac has 
shot up to the height of a two-story house, 
and now that the windows are no longer 
there to help one to gather them, it shows, 
when in bloom, a crown of inaccessible 
blossoms j others yield their wealth of 
70 



The Wreck of an Ancient Garden 

flowers nearer at hand, and by the well 
a Persian Lilac drops like a fountain with 
rosy jets. 

No longer supported by the fallen house, Roses of ye 
a Trumpet Creeper, which trailed along 
the ground, has been clipped into a com- 
pact bush. A venerable Altheea, which 
we did our best to save, blossomed feebly 
for a season or two and then perished, de- 
prived of the accustomed shelter of the 
porch ; but great bushes of the old-fash- 
ioned White Rose abound, and there, too, 
is the sweet Blush Rose, beloved of the 
bee and the sturdy Hessian. A large 
Damask Rose still flourishes under the 
Lilacs, and a luxuriant Baltimore Belle 
climbs in reckless profusion over its con- 
fining wires. Where the fence stood is a 
low cluster of bushes covered in summer 
with a bold Red Rose, single and splendid, 
the remote parent, perhaps, of the Jacque- 
minot ; they call it here the Russian Rose, 
but I do not know what its real name 
may be ; and down in the orchard I found 
a bush of the dear, thorny little Scotch 
Rose, the smell of which is laden, as is no 
other, with the memories of childhood. 

71 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



Homely 
/lowers. 



A H aged- 
Box arbor. 



There are clumps of Tiger Lilies, and 
old-fashioned small Bluebells, and Sweet 
Williams, and a Barberry bush swings its 
yellow blossoms and red berries over the 
rear wall ; and under the Box-arbor I found 
Spiderwort growing in great clusters. 

One day, while strolling down along the 
orchard fence, a familiar odor, heavy and 
sweet, led me on to where a wild Aza- 
lea was hanging out its fragrant blos- 
soms. I do not see why a hedge of these 
might not do well in this moist soil. I 
hailed this one with delight as an orna- 
ment to the place. 

But what we like best is the fine old 
Box arbor, which has grown up from a 
garden border until its stout trees are now 
six inches in diameter, and nearly ten 
feet high, which shows their great age. 
They were fair-sized bushes when old men 
of this town were boys, and to make even 
a bush of a Box plant is slow work. Here, 
shaded by a young Elm which has sprung 
up in the kindly shelter of these twisted 
old trunks, we sit and look out upon the 
meadow and the growing plants, and feel 
72 



The Wreck of an Ancient Garden 

linked with the past by this memento of Memento of 
those who loved this garden spot, and 
toiled to make it fair and fruitful, even as 
we, too, toil to restore its beauty and pro- 
ductiveness. 

73 



VII 

A NEW PERENNIAL GARDEN 



Pluck the primroses ; pluck the violets ; 
Pluck the daisies, 
Sing their praises ; 
Friendship with the flowers some noble thought 
begets. 

Edward Youl. 



VII 




HOUGH the old garden has a it requires 
quaint attraction from its very ^makethe 
antiquity, the effort to make its IZ'^^^tt^. 
successor the subject of a chap- 
ter reminds me of the remark of a Uterary 
man, who paid his only visit to Scotland 
in the winter-time, that he realized more 
fully than ever before how great was the 
genius of Sir Walter Scott, which had 
given world-renown for picturesqueness to 
those low, round, bare, uninteresting hills, 
the Trossachs. Lacking that genius, I 
am somewhat dismayed at telling the 
story of my very unimportant little gar- 
den. Our late, cold springs render it 
rather a dreary object of contemplation 
even in the month of May, and with only 
the power of words to help the reader's 
enjoyment, I shall have to ask indulgence 
for the meagre record of its very simple 
charms. 

77 



77?^ Rescue of an Old Place 
An Irish jvji-s, Carlvlc used to tell a story of an 

story. ■' _ •' 

Irish prison that was to be built out of 
the stones of an old one, while the prison- 
ers were to be kept in the old jail until 
the new one was completed. This tale 
suggests our fashion of constructing a 
new garden out of the former one, and 
in our case the prisoners showed a de- 
cided preference for the original institu- 
tion, and were with great difficulty per- 
suaded to leave it. We started out 
with no very definite plan beyond killing 
two birds with one stone, always a desir- 
able object when one is short-handed, 
and the results are not particularly im- 
pressive. 
A garden While the housc at Overlea was build- 

ing, the carpenters kept their tools in a 
part of the old dwelling that was still 
standing, and their constant journeys to 
and fro, between the knoll and the work- 
shop, wore a narrow winding path, along 
which we had a flower-bed dug, to put 
such roots in as we wished to bring with 
us from the rented place that we were oc- 
cupying, and also to serve as a home for 
such plants as we might dig up about the 
78 



path. 



A New Perennial Garden 

farm. Some sprigs of Box, broken from 
the arbor, and set in the soil at the edge 
of the bed, took root and made a rough 
border, and here, in August, I trans- 
planted Lily bulbs, and a little later put 
in such perennials as needed to be set out 
in the fall. 

Between this flower-bed and the street Some old 
were three rows of straggling old Pear- 
trees that gave some suggestion of possi- 
ble fruitfulness, though it seemed likely 
that they were too old to profit by prun- 
ing. They had been famous in their day, 
and still preserved the remnants of a repu- 
tation, though more modern varieties have 
borne away the palm in newer gardens. 
But Bartletts and Sheldons and Seckels 
will never be out of date, and there are 
others, the very names of which the old 
settlers have forgotten, which still yield 
sweet and luscious fruit, when the weather 
and the insects permit. Half dead they 
seemed when we first went to work at 
them, cutting away the dead branches and 
scraping their mossy trunks, to the infinite 
disturbance of the insects which had clus- 
tered there for warmth, and we recognized 

79 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



IVIiat we 
did to them. 



A box of 
plants. 



that only strong methods would revive 
them. 

We needed sods for the terraces we 
were making, and so began by removing 
the turf around the trees, leaving narrow 
strips of grass to walk upon. This fur- 
nished us with three wide beds, which we 
fertilized heavily with rich compost and 
wood-ashes, the surface being tilled with 
great care, keeping the edge of the spade 
turned toward the trunk to avoid cutting 
off the rootlets of the trees. A memory 
of an old garden in which I had played 
when a child, where Pear-trees grew 
among the flowers, induced me to think 
of utilizing these broad fertile spaces for 
perennials. The Pear-trees were at that 
time doubtful as fruit-producers, but they 
would afford a grateful shelter from the 
hot sun when we were working among the 
plants, and their sparse foliage would 
hardly interfere greatly with the flowers. 

In the spring a generous friend sent me 
a box of hardy plants, which were set out 
at random, as they came without labels, 
and many of them were unfamiliar to me. 
I do not find that they interfere much 
80 



A New Perennial Garden 



with the Pear-trees, which, under this 
steady cultivation, yield more of their fine 
old-fashioned fruit than we know what to 
do with, for pears are a drug in this mar- 
ket and can hardly be given away. The 
Pear-trees certainly do not hinder the 
growth of the sturdy perennials, which 
multiply enormously, so that every spring 
and fall there are quantities of them to be 
shared with friends. A nurseryman, who 
came last year to set some Strawberry- 
plants, declared that, if properly divided, 
there were roots enough there to stock an 
acre. 

Such strong, showy plants as the Iris, They thrive. 
the Foxglove, and the Giant Evening 
Primrose flourish admirably, while Phlox 
and Hollyhocks and Columbines and Spi- 
raeas encumber the ground. 

There is a huge Oriental Poppy that is 
a gorgeous spectacle, with its rich blue- 
green velvet robes and its silken headgear , 
of scarlet and black, producing all alone 
the effect of a procession, as Bret Harte 
once said of Roscoe Conkling. 

Smaller Poppies come up of their own 
accord, some single, some double, as the 
8i 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

The things fancy takes them, and there is a wild ar- 
tkisYc^en. ^^Y of Larkspurs and Coreopsis and 
Sweet WilHams all summer. In the 
spring the variegated Thyme comes up 
promptly, followed closely by English 
Daisies and Moss Pinks, and Pansies and 
Violets, white, blue and yellow. The 
Giant Solomon's Seal rings its green bells 
over the heads of the tiny Bellwort ; and 
all summer the Lilies and Peonies and 
Spiderworts fight for possession of the 
ground, while the perennial Peas, and 
Calendulas and Marigolds linger there till 
the last frost-horn blows. 

The collection is not very choice, and, 
beyond a periodical struggle with the 
weeds, which try to grow as rampantly as 
the flowers, it gets not very much atten- 
tion ; but it makes a fine show from the 
street, and from the veranda which looks 
down upon it. Any minute effects would 
be wasted here, and we do not extend its 
area, which we might readily do, because 
it already requires more attention than we 
are willing to spare from the shrubs and 
trees that we are hurrying along upon the 
lawn, and which, consequently, take all 
82 



A New Perennial Garden 



our best energies, as well as the lion's 
share of food. In short, the flower-garden 
takes what it can get, — copes more or less 
successfully with its own weeds, and pos- 
sibly is more satisfactory than if we took 
more pains with it, and so were liable to 
disappointments. It is not at all well 
adapted to annuals, even Mignonettes 
and Asters, which are sown every year, 
for the stronger plants rob them of their 
proper nutriment ; but I have future plans 
for a parterre in that neighborhood, which 
shall have fitting accommodation for all 
the sweet old-fashioned kinds of yearly 
flowers. 

Supplemented by the old garden, the a noseg-ay 

.,, /-r 1 always to be 

new will even now at any season afford a had here. 
fragrant and showy nosegay, such as our 
grandmothers liked for a beaupot, and 
there is always a mass of color under the 
Pear-trees until late in November, when 
the cold pinches the very last Calendula. 
The neighborhood of the salt water makes 
this garden cold, and slow to awake in 
spring ; but, on the other hand, it modifies 
the temperature in the autumn, so that it 
escapes the early frosts, and, under the 
83 



corner. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

shelter of the trees, the flowers last long 
after those upon the high ground about 
the house have withered and fallen. 
A ivarm There is a sheltered corner, backed by 

a mass of Lilacs and Mock Oranges, where 
I dream of seeing some day a fine clump 
of Rhododendrons and hardy Azaleas, 
though I have some doubts about a south- 
ern exposure being the very best thing for 
them ; but the decorative effect from the 
house will be so good that we are disposed 
to make the attempt. Skirting the old 
wall to the right of this, we come to the 
ancient Apple and Pear trees which are 
the remains of the once valuable orchard, 
that at one time covered a large part of 
the place. 

84 



VIII 
A VENERABLE ORCHARD 



O blessed shades ! O gentle cool retreat 

From all the immoderate heat, 
In which the frantic world does burn and sweat ! 
Abraham Cowley, 

'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that 
swingeth. 
And tolls its perfume on the passing air. 
Makes sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth 
A call to prayer. 

Horace Smith. 



i 






VIII 



HE whole farm at Overlea might r/te orchard 
well be called an orchard, for '^pi'^/. 



it abounds in Apple and Pear 
trees, which are scattered about 
it, from the point at the north to the foot 
of the hill on the south. 

Tall, fuzzy old settlers they are, with 
mossy trunks and gaunt branches ; but, 
like the ancient New England human 
stock, they die game, and are useful to 
the end. The weather-beaten old Seckels, 
which look perfectly hopeless, still produce 
stout, brown, rosy little pears, as sweet as 
honey, if not much bigger than an over- 
grown bumble-bee, and the venerable 
Bartletts, which we threaten every year to 
cut down, because they look so shabby 
and disreputable in their torn and mossy 
old jackets, put off the evil day by molli- 
fying us every September with a crop, 

87 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

which, though not large, still serves to 
purchase them a reprieve. 
Methuselah One of the conspicuous ornaments of 
tree. ^''^' the levcl space below the northern ter- 
race of the house is an old Pear-tree we 
call Methuselah, which was transplanted 
in 1779, and, in spite of its great age, still 
bears a profusion of hard, sweet pears, 
which the housewives consider excellent 
for coddling, or preserving with barberries. 
This ancient and honorable old continen- 
tal, which stands some fifty feet in its 
stockings, girths ten feet and three inches 
a foot from the ground, and has a coat so 
beautifully wrinkled and seamed with age, 
that our artist friend tells us a Japanese 
would beg a bit of the bark for a curio, 
and exhibit it as a precious and artistic 
possession. In the spring its venerable 
poll is snowy with blossoms, and though 
its great trunk is quite hollow within, the 
six huge branches into which it separates 
near the base spread wide and strong, and 
send out from their broken tops vigorous 
young shoots, on which the fruit grows 
profusely. 

We suppose this to be the original well 
88 



A Venerable Orchard 



known Gushing Pear-tree, as this farm 
was a part of the colonial grant to Mat- 
thew Gushing in 1634, and was the Stamm- 
haus of that widespread race, which held 
the property in the Gushing name for two 
hundred and forty years, the land having 
descended by will from one to another, 
so that we hold the first deed, and paid the 
first money that was ever given for it. 

The Apple orchard proper, which is in The Appu 
the shape of a flat-iron, lies in the point 
of the place, which is quite filled by three 
or four enormous old trees, which have 
grown to a great height, and had, when 
we came, immense branches that arched 
over and almost swept the ground, their 
huge mounds of rosy bloom in spring 
making a wondrous sight. 

Since then, with a vague idea of improv- 
ing them, though some of the wise ones 
tell us it is a mistake to meddle with such 
old trees, we have had them pruned, that 
the sun might shine more directly upon 
the apples, which failed to color properly 
in the dense shade. Also, the ground 
beneath them has been plowed, to the 
great detriment of their small roots, which, 
89 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

owing to the marshy ground below, lie 
very near the surface. 

Last year was not their bearing year, 
and not until this autumn could we tell the 
effect of this surgery, which seems to have 
had fairly good results, for the yield was 
satisfactory though not large. The plow- 
ing was not done so much for the trees as 
for the grass, which had been fairly driven 
out by the encroachments of the Money- 
wort, which has escaped from the garden 
and runs riot over the place ; and the prun- 
ing was as necessary for the hay-crop as for 
the fruit, for the great Elm hard by helps 
to shade all that part of the grounds, and 
even now the grass, when cut, has to be 
transported into the open to be cured. 
Old Apple- The year we took possession, three 
trees at this point — a Baldwin, a Rhode 
Island Greening and a Russet — furnished 
us with about a dozen barrels of apples. 
In addition, there are in other parts of the 
place more old-fashioned trees, like the 
Seek-no-Further and Early Sweet, that are 
extremely useful, and fairly productive in 
spite of their years and infirmities. One 
of the latter trees is quite a curiosity, for 
90 



trees 



A Venerable Orchard 



half of it is wholly denuded of bark, as if 
it had been struck by lightning, and the 
trunk is perfectly hollow, but the grafted 
stem still sends out very strong and 
healthy-looking shoots, that yield an abun- 
dance of fine rosy-cheeked fruit every 
other year. 

The canker-worm has meddled very lit- 
tle with these trees, but the web-caterpil- 
lar has to be waged constant war upon, 
both in spring and fall, and the last two 
summers, owing to the preceding mild 
winter, this pest was particularly active 
and ubiquitous. 

A row of Plum-trees against the east 
foundation-wall of the old house, which 
still stands, and makes a good shelter for 
our Raspberry bushes, seem as if they 
would do well if we could only cope suc- 
cessfully with the murderous black knot, 
with which we found them perfectly cov- 
ered. In 1889 all the diseased portions 
were cut away, and since then they have 
sent out a quantity of tall, healthy branches, 
but no blossoms, from their closely polled 
stems ; we purpose next spring to try the 
effect of salt bags in the crotches of the 
91 



good for 
amtnuni- 
tion. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

limbs, which, we have been told, is a suc- 
cessful way of keeping off the curculio. 
But from what we read of the necessary- 
efforts to get rid of this pest, we fear that 
the plums would hardly be worth the trou- 
ble, for it seems as if nothing less than a 
Salvation Army would suffice to combat 
this persistent beetle sinner. 
Iron Pears In our Orchard are Iron Pears of the 
good old kind that would serve for ammu- 
nition in a field piece in case of war, and 
some rickety-looking Lawrences, that bear 
excellent fruit in generous quantities ; and 
there is a picturesque Crab-apple tree 
which grows quite too near the great Elm 
to furnish any decent fruit, though it does 
its best, and strews the ground beneath it 
with its stony red and yellow apples. The 
old Cherry-trees were too worthless, so we 
cut them down. We have but few Peach- 
trees, though we are told they would thrive 
against the hill, as they like a northern 
exposure. We are now preparing to plant 
a fresh Apple orchard, which ought to be 
ready to bear by the time the old trees 
quite give out, and we are grateful for 
suggestions as to the best kinds for domes- 
92 



A Venerable Orchard 



tic uses, and eager to know whether the 
trees will be more likely to thrive in the 
moist or in the dry part of the grounds. 

But there is a charm about this unpro- charm of 
ductive old orchard, with its wilderness of '^ "^'^ 
venerable shrubs along the fence, that no 
thrifty modern row of fruitful trees will 
ever possess. As one sits there in the 
shade on a sunny day, with the white pet- 
als drifting down from their lofty boughs, 
there is a murmur of bees among the foli- 
age, of robins chattering among the twigs, 
a rustle of leaves and flowers in the gentle 
breeze, that seems the essence of the many 
summers gone that have helped to swell 
their great boles, and to increase their 
majestic height. From under the arch of 
branches the green meadow is visible, with 
wooded hills rising from its margin, among 
which nestle cottages, white and red, with 
the faint smoke curling lazily from their 
chimneys, up to the blue sky flecked with 
round white clouds. How many years the 
old trees have looked out upon the quiet 
meadow, and for how many generations 
have they dropped their rosy fruit ! 

In this new country of ours we yearn 
93 



77?^ Rescue of an Old Place 

oidHing- for Stability, for tradition, for something: 

ham. . ■'' ' *= 

to link us with that past which goes back 
so little way behind us here. Perhaps the 
grafts on these mossy limbs were brought 
from England by the early settlers who peo- 
pled the old colony. Under their shade the 
sturdy Puritan has leaned upon his spade 
and remembered the orchards of his native 
land, which he was never to see again ; 
and now, as the vision grows before our 
dreaming eyes, we climb the ladder of the 
past, and are again in Lincolnshire, and 
the choir-boys are chanting softly in the 
distance, and the bells are ringing from St. 
Andrew's Church, of the other Hingham, 
the gray towers of which we see afar off, 
instead of the quaint spire of our old 
meeting-house, whose tenscore years of 
life seem so little in the older world, where 
they reckon time by centuries instead of 
decades. 
A Memory We sec the widc green fens, and the 
shire. fallow fields besprinkled with grazing 

herds, the rich meadows where the lush 
grass grows, and where great crops repay 
the farmer's easy labor ; the wolds with 
their chalk-hills, the thrifty hamlets, the 
94 



A Venerable Orchard 



sluggish rivers creeping to the sea, the The robin 
Humber with old Hull at its mouth, the 7hfoUior- 
broad bay of the Wash, overlooked by "'"''' ' 
English Boston, the level pastures by the 
swift-flowing Lindis, where the great tide 
came in. The bells from the great towers 
are ringing, — is that the " Brides of En- 
derby " we hear ? — and so we wander in 
a dream of the far past, till the boom of 
the bells resolves itself suddenly into the 
humming of bees, the venerable towers 
vanish in the shaggy trunks around us, 
and we are awake once more, under the 
bending boughs of the old orchard, with 
only a robin for a chorister. 

95 



IX 

A STRUGGLE WITH THE WEB^ 
WORM 



Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town. 

Longfellow. 

Nine hundred thousand reptiles blue. 

H. Bennett. 



^ 



m M 



sas 



IX 



T is a delightful thing to own an The vaiain- 
orchard, but it is a blessing not wo^. ' 
to be enjoyed without fighting 
for it, since among the difficul- 
ties of reclaiming a place, one cannot ig- 
nore the necessary hand-to-hand conflict 
with the various animal and vegetable en- 
emies which lie in wait to destroy plants 
and trees. Eternal vigilance is the price 
of vegetation as well as of liberty, and the 
cultivator who dreams that he can for a 
moment take his ease in his inn, reckons 
without his guests of the insect-world, 
who take short naps, and require as much 
nourishment as Falstaff. I shall have 
more to say upon this subject at a later 
date, but the Apple-trees remind me of 
conflicts with the web-worm, and I find a 
treatise upon his manners and customs 
apropos. As an example of pertinacity, 
Bruce's spider beside him pales her inef- 

99 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

fectual fires ; as an evidence of the apa- 
thetic stupidity of man he is unrivaled, 
and as a menace of future untold horrors 
he may well be used to point a moral of 
gruesome interest. 
rA? real Somc philosophcr has said that " the 

world.^ ' real end of the world will come when man 
ceases to be able to cope with the insects." 
When his time comes the worm is the mas- 
ter of us all, but there is no reason while 
we are yet stirring about this earthly ball, 
that we need submit to be devoured by him 
before our day. And 3^et, when you come 
to think of it, that is what the brute is 
after. Too cowardly to attack man openly, 
he begins by eating up his provender. 
Man, being on the whole an easy-going 
animal, at first pays not much attention ; 
but he only multiplies moderately, and 
the insect enormously. Where a man will 
leave a half dozen descendants in a life- 
time, a worm will leave one hundred and 
twenty-five thousand in a season ; judge 
then if this can be allowed to go on in- 
definitely, and man survive ! 

Where the inane apathy of the human 
being comes in, is in not crushing his 

lOO 



A Struggle with the Web-worm 

enemy while yet insignificant ; forever 
penny wise and pound foolish, man tole- 
rates a moderate evil until it becomes in- 
ordinate, and then wastes a fortune which 
might well have been saved, in doing in- 
effectual battle with his foe. It is the 
fable of Epimetheus forever renewed, and 
the appeal I would now make is to have 
this Pandora's box closed before the rest 
of the web-worms escape to plague the 
world, and help make an end of the race. 

It is idle to scoff at this idea as that Theweb- 
of an alarmist. A few years ago the ^rJ'JZs"'} 
spring web-worm was an unimportant ""'"^^''^ 
factor in our orchards. The fall worm 
gave some trouble, but he was not impos- 
sible to cope with. Now, not only do 
we have to fight for every apple we pos- 
sess in the autumn, but all through the 
months of April and May, when work 
presses, when every moment is precious, 
it takes not only all the hands on a 
farm to fight caterpillars, but also all the 
eyes of the family to detect their lurking- 
places ; and this not as one job, but as a 
perpetually recurring duty for weeks at a 
time, and all on account of the crying neg- 

lOI 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

lect by land-owners of their premises, and 

by town authorities of the webs on their 

Webs on the Qwn highways, which have been allowed 

high-road. 

to accumulate, until the country roads 
have lost their beauty, lined as they are 
with trees shrouded from root to summit 
in ghostly webs, under which myriads of 
loathsome black worms writhe and crawl, 
and eat their fill, to the shuddering dis- 
gust of the wayfarer. 

Far and near, not only are the Wild 
Cherry trees, already infested with the 
odious black knot, left to spread a second 
plague among the fruit-trees, but whole 
orchards are allowed to bear unmolested 
swarms of caterpillars, their owners pre- 
ferring to sacrifice their apples rather 
than take the trouble to clean their trees 
of the webs. 
Communi- Sincc the State of Massachusetts has 
take charge taken the Gypsy Moth in hand, why should 
not communities take charge of their own 
worms, and enforce the destruction of the 
webs by each land-owner, under penalty 
of a fine, while the street commissioners 
be made to attend to the trees bordering 
the highway ? 

102 



of their own 
■warnts. 



A Struggle with the IVeb-worm 

The farmers who neglect this rapidly Farmers 
increasing nuisance seem to me like the ^ItoUd'rurk. 
Turk who sits under a crumbling wall, 
murmuring, " God is great ! if it falls it 
falls ! " and takes no pains to get out of 
the way. 

So far as our own little farm is con- How the 
cerned, some tall Wild Cherry trees that we ^Zghu 
depend on for a screen give us timely no- 
tice of the arrival of the pest, and bring us 
all out promptly to do battle. The worms 
are fought with fire on the end of a pole, 
with a tall clipping knife, and with a wire 
brush attached to the end of a long bam- 
boo rod, which reaches to the very top of 
the tallest trees, where, being judiciously 
twisted, it brings down a crop of crawlers 
for more positive destruction below. The 
clipping is the most thorough method, for, 
if done late in the evening, the nest, with 
all its occupants, can be secured and its 
contents burned or trampled to death. In 
this way all the insects can be destroyed, 
but, of course, it is only possible where 
the web is on the end of a small branch. 
Where it lies in the great crotches, the 
torch or the wire brush must be applied ; 
103 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

but the former lets some escape, and I am 
told that when the nests are burned, the 
fire shrivels the outside of the crawling 
mass, which falls with the web to the 
ground, but the caterpillars in the heart 
of the living ball escape, to crawl up the 
tree again and start afresh upon their 
depredations. 
The worm It is of no usc to think that you have 

has come to i • , i i r 

stay. accomplished your purpose because, after 

heroic labor, there seeins not a vestige of 
a nest remaining. No sooner do you feel 
that you have routed the last encampment 
of the enemy than, presto ! his tents are 
once more like those of the Assyrian for 
multitude, and in a day or two you must 
resume your round to find the enemy big- 
ger and brisker than ever. About three 
months of the season have to be given up 
to the two campaigns, spring and fall, till 
finally a person of imagination begins to 
feel that the philosopher's prediction is 
about to be fulfilled, and that the worm 
has come to stay. 

" Of what use are the Cherry-trees "i " 
say the wise ; " the worm, after all, is not 
so bad as the black knot, and compared 
104 



A Struggle with the Weh-worm 

to the canker-worm he is harmless : " but 
the terror of his multiplication is upon me, 
and I live in fear of the day when, having 
ruined all the fruit-trees, and having failed 
to find the shade-trees to his liking, the 
worm may take a fancy to investigate 
within - doors to find a more tempting 
meal. 

A vision of opening the front door in An awful 

'■ ° _ vision of the 

the morning to find the house encased in fuhtre. 
an enormous web, under which the worms 
are feeding on the shingles, and glaring 
at you from under their silken canopy, 
besets the imagination. You seize your 
hat, a brisk young family drops out of it ; 
your coat — there are a score of creeping 
things inside the sleeves. The breakfast- 
table is invaded by a squirming throng ; 
others hang from the draperies and wan- 
der across the ceilings. Why may not the 
web-worms become as great a pest to us 
as the termites prove to the South Afri- 
can, if the apathetic public does not 
awake in time to the necessity of destroy- 
ing them while they are yet in the minor- 
ity ? 

Here in this town, where the neglect of 

105 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

certain farmers adds so greatly to the 
labors of their more thrifty neighbors, we 
have seen these loathsome creatures mul- 
tiply in a few years to an alarming extent, 
and it seems as if the time had come to 
render it a penal offense to neglect to de- 
stroy the webs as fast as they appear. 
Unquestionably, the day is coming when 
some destructive measures will have to be 
adopted, and the sooner the matter is 
taken in hand the easier it will be for all 
concerned to get rid of the evil, and I 
should be glad if some more powerful pen 
than mine could be used to hurry this 
good end. 
An evil An cvil, trifling in itself, becomes a 

neglected " 

becomes a mcnacc if neglcctcd, and the compara- 
tnenace. tivcly inoffensivc character of this little 
brute seems to blind the public to the way 
in which he is multiplying. A committee 
to find out how much harm he does might 
serve as a preliminary to more strenuous 
measures, but if it were only in the inter- 
est of those lovely rustic roads, in which 
we take so much delight, it would be 
worth while to clear away so obtrusive 
an eyesore as these loathsome webs from 
1 06 



A Struggle with the Weh-worm 

the waysides, otherwise so beautiful with 
their wild vines and tangle of bushes. 

Moreover, for the pedestrian the mul- The worm 

. ... - . , , . , . to be met on 

tiplication of caterpillars is a distress the side- 
yearly more and more appalling. After """ 
the worm has eaten his fill he sets forth 
upon his peregrinations, to find a shel- 
tered spot where he can become a hermit 
in a cell, until such time as his resurrec- 
tion as a moth is in order, and you are 
obliged to meet him on his winding way 
at every turn in your path. Country side- 
walks swarm with the wretches; verandas 
are their especial delight ; you gather a 
flower, a caterpillar is crawling up the 
stem ; examine your trees of all sorts, the 
brutes are making of their trunks a public 
promenade, up which they hurry at top 
speed to make a cocoon in the branches ; 
would you rest yourself upon a bench, 
the caterpillar is there before you ; if you 
wear a thin gown, you may have the plea- 
sure of viewing through its meshes the 
wriggling, hairy form of your enemy, just 
where you cannot get at him. He makes 
himself at home amid the flowers of your 
bonnet, he swings down upon a silken 
107 



The Rescue of an Old Place 
Me is fatal thread within an inch of your nose. He 

to Christian . , , , . 

character, arouscs in the gcntlcst breast a desire to 
slay this future parent of thousands ; he 
undermines the character by stirring up 
sentiments of virulent hostility in other- 
wise peaceable souls ; he becomes a men- 
ace not only to existence, but to Christian 
character, by developing the savage in- 
stincts of our nature ; and, therefore, on 
every ground, both physical and moral, he 
is an enemy of the public peace who should 
be taken in hand by the authorities and be 
doomed to extermination. 

Should I be requested to provide my 
enemy with a more precise name than 
Web-worm, not being learned in entomol- 
ogy, the only term I dare to vouch for 
is Nasticrechia Krorluppia (to be pro- 
nounced English fashion). 

To this family I am entirely sure he be- 
longs, but one of the reports of the De- 
partment of Agriculture has a good deal 
to say about a certain Hyphantria cunea, 
"which seems to correspond to him in some 
particulars, and the same report furnishes 
for him ten more synonymous names that 
apparently can be used if necessary, 
io8 



A Struggle with the Web-worm 

From this abundance I have selected the a descriptive 
above as the most euphonious and descrip- "'""'' 
tive, for nothing could be more appropri- 
ate than the term "Shameless Weaver," 
which, I have been told, is the translation 
of these polysyllables. Should my partic- 
ular web-worm require a more formal in- 
troduction to the public, it is to be hoped 
that some entomologist will kindly supply 
his real designation to those who seek fur- 
ther information concerning this unprinci- 
pled reptile. 

109 



X 



PLANTING TREES ON A 
LAWN 



The gods who mortal beauty chase. 
Still in a tree did end their race. 

Andrew Makvell. 




HEN our house was built, and wemake 
the lawn prepared for their re- Txpe/iLent 
ception, we made our first ex- 'i^^Tr"fs. 
periment in moving good-sized 
trees in the month of January, when we 
transplanted two large Norway Maples, 
given to us by a friend on condition that 
we would take them away at that time, as 
otherwise they would be destroyed by 
some grading that was going on where 
they stood. 

Fortunately, it was an open winter, with 
no frost in the ground, and there was no 
difficulty about digging. I personally con- 
ducted the procession, and insisted upon 
having the diggers begin at the outside, 
and work in toward the trunk, so as to 
save all the little roots. It was slow and 
careful work, and it took all day to move 
two trees. They were too heavy to lift 
with a ball of earth, as we had no special 

113 



Tlje Rescue of an Old Place 

appliances for the purpose, for the largest 
one measured six inches through, two feet 
from the ground, and had a lofty top. 
Severe top- After the trees were carefully uprooted 
iesfarj/'""' their tops were cut off, until the main 
stems were only about eight feet high, and 
the branches that were left running up 
from them were also cut back to within a 
few feet of their union with the trunk. 
Could we have foreseen the mildness of 
the two succeeding winters we should have 
been tempted to prune them less severely. 
I am almost sure that it was unnecessary, 
but moving them at such an unusual sea- 
son seemed to make it wise to give them 
more root than top. It will take about 
four years for them to get back their origi- 
nal stature after this severe treatment, but 
they perhaps have escaped risks of draw- 
backs by the way. Similar trees in this 
town, transplanted without topping, though 
they have lived, have shown signs of fee- 
bleness, and I am disposed to think that 
in the end ours will make the finer speci- 
mens. 

The holes in which they were set were 
dug six feet in diameter, and nearly five 
114 



Planting Trees on a Lawn 

feet deep. A gentle rain was falling when 
the Maples were set ; six or seven cart- 
loads of loam were put around them, and 
when the roots were fairly covered, and 
the ground trodden closely about them, 
water was put into the holes before they 
were finally filled up. 

These two trees, planted on the south Great suc- 
side of a gravelly slope, so that the mois- 7he\e"irees. 
ture must run away from their roots more 
than is desirable, have made so heavy 
a growth in the last two years, that in 
the middle of summer we have been com- 
pelled to cut out many large branches to 
admit light, and to improve their shape. 
In addition to their density of growth, 
they have shot up fresh stems, between 
seven and eight feet long, in the two sea- 
sons they have been fairly growing, for 
the first summer they did not accomplish 
much beyond a good crop of leaves. By 
the end of July we look to see them grow 
four or five feet more, as they are fairly 
set, and in fine healthy condition. The 
ground about them has been kept open 
and cultivated, and is heavily enriched 
several times in the course of the summer. 
115 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



Success en- 
courages us 
to plant 
others. 



They are so near the house that we use 
the broad space around them as beds for 
Geraniums and Heliotropes, which proba- 
bly detracts a little from the growth of the 
trees, but at the same time improves their 
appearance and keeps the earth moist and 
well stirred up about their roots. When 
the season is dry they are very thoroughly 
watered at least twice a week, by leaving 
the water from the hose running on them 
from its open mouth for an hour or two at 
a time. 

In April we moved in the same manner 
a Silver Maple, which has grown nine feet 
and ten inches, and a stocky White Wil- 
low, which has been put quite near the 
house to give us immediate shade, of 
which we are greatly in need, and which 
is to be cut down as soon as the Maples 
are big enough. This last tree, set in a 
very dry place, has grown a dense head 
nine feet six inches in height, so that it 
is now a tree seventeen feet high. 

These are the best we have to show, ex- 
cept a Catalpa, which has made a most 
luxuriant growth, for our Ash-leaved Ma- 
ple, which was also disposed to make a 
ii6 



Planting Trees on a Lawn 

record, has been moved twice and so set 
back. But this growth on a gravel-bank, 
where no one thought that trees could be 
made to live at all, is not to be despised. 
Some of the other trees have grown almost 
equally well, but were not so large to begin 
with, so they seem less important. 

In that same April the generous friend a generous 
who furnished us with the large Willow ' 
and the Silver Maple, kindly sent us, in ad- 
dition, a dozen moderate-sized trees which 
he was disposed to think would grow faster 
than the larger ones ; and these were placed 
somewhat at random on the lawn, for they 
came unexpectedly, and had to be set 
without much reflection, so that some of 
them have had to be moved again. 

And here we will honestly admit that the 
landscape-gardener would have been of 
great use to us, for the lack of experience 
gives one a feeling of uncertainty about 
the result of even his best -considered 
arrangement, which is often disquieting. 

We know for one thing that we have ciose^iant- 

, , ing nndesir- 

too many trees too near together, because able. 
we never dreamed they would all make 
up their minds to live, and we discover 
117 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



Trees for 
the tiext 
generation. 



that after taking great pains to make a 
tree grow, we cannot make up our minds 
to disturb it for fear it will be in the way 
in the future, and so we postpone the evil 
day. Possibly they will do better in their 
wind-swept situation for not being widely 
separated, and for the next generation, 
which will be unrestrained by our senti- 
ments, we have provided some small Elms 
that ought to be good trees by the time 
the short-lived Maples are beginning to 
shuffle off their mortal coil. We know 
that the least enduring of them will out- 
live us, unless we emulate old Parr, and 
the famous Countess of Desmond, 



Elms to be 
our ceno- 



taph. 



Who lived to the age of a hundred and ten, 
And died by a fall from a Cherry-tree then. 

All we ask is that they will hurry to shel- 
ter us from the burning afternoon sun, to 
which our front is exposed, and when their 
task is done, the noble Elms, which are 
" a hundred years growing, a hundred 
years standing, a hundred years dying," 
shall be our monument when this house, 
like its ancient predecessor, shall have 
crumbled to ruin. 

ii8 



Planting Trees on a Lawn 

Impatient as we are to achieve miracles 
of growth, we might forget how much our 
little trees are doing were it not for a pho- 
tograph taken in 1888, which shows them 
scudding under bare poles, that makes 
their present height quite imposing by 
contrast. 

In the five years which we claimed of 
our critics in the beginning, we are now 
sure that all air of newness will have gone 
from the knoll, which, even in the second 
summer, astonished the passers-by, who 
were most of them unused to the results 
that can be attained by unremitting exer- 
tions. 

Against these trees we have no charges Trials with 

, . . , . - . . Hemlocks. 

to make of either stubbornness or ingrati- 
tude ; given the conditions, the results are 
all, and more than all, we had a right to 
expect. The only ones that have not been 
what we could wish are the Hemlocks, 
which object strenuously to the dry, windy 
situation, and only live under protest. In 
vain do we plant nursery trees with good 
roots ; they dwindle and pine, and refuse 
to profit by their advantages. Out of over 
forty trees planted on the lawn and its 
119 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

slopes, they are the only ones that fail to 
give satisfaction, and we desire to get the 
better of them if possible. 
Tender No evergreen is so graceful and sugges- 

)'emLk.^'^ tive of wild woodland ways as this feathery 
denizen of the forest, that seems to shrink 
from the companionship of man. The per- 
fmne of its boughs reminds one of camps 
in the woods, of canoes, of Indian guides, 
and silent solitudes. For me it has ever a 
peculiar and elusive charm, and I cannot 
come in my wanderings upon some majes- 
tic old tree beside a granite boulder, as it 
loves to grow, without a thrill compounded 
of association and admiration. The Hem- 
lock seems to possess every beauty that a 
tree can have : its form, whether it be 
symmetrical with youth, or gnarled and 
twisted by age, is always impressive and 
noble ; the murmur of its boughs is ten- 
derly musical, its fragrance exquisitely 
wild and aromatic ; its very shyness has a 
charm that seems to breathe distinction, 
and, best of all, it is perennially green, so 
that its blue shadows on the snow give 
one of the loveliest tones in a winter 
landscape. 



Planting Trees on a Lawn 
Why, then, since I woo it with such KUied-with 

1 rr , • 1 • 1 kindness. 

tender affection, such anxious care, does 
it refuse to grow for me ? Possibly it is 
killed with kindness, and some wholesome 
neglect may be what its shy soul desires, 
for I notice that the little ones in the 
swale, half smothered in grass, do not die, 
though left wholly to their own wayward 
devices, while the pampered specimens on 
the lawn lift bare and ragged branches to 
the sky, from out their luxurious beds of 
mulching, and are painfully disappointing 
and uncertain. 

121 



XI 

RECLAIMING A SALT 
MEADOW 



Ye marshes, how candid and simple, and nothing 
withholding and free, 

Ye publish yourselves to the sky, and offer your- 
selves to the sea. 

Sidney Lanier. 



XI 




HE ornamental part of the place 
once under way, we had leisure 
to give a little attention to 
the practical, and accordingly 
we began to wish to utilize some of the 
waste land lying on the east side of the 
farm, where the salt water made free in- 
roads during high tides into a half acre 
of otherwise good mowing, and here we 
learned the meaning of an interesting par- 
able in Roman history. 

The fable of Metius Curtius plunging Metim 
on horseback into the morass which had a^warning 
opened in the Roman Forum, because the 
oracle had declared that only the best 
thing in Rome would be of avail to close 
it up, must have been invented simply 
to show that the Romans, great engi- 
neers as they were, fully recognized that 
filling up a marsh was a well-nigh endless 
job, which would require the sacrifice of 
125 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



No man 
can resist 
draining a 
meadow. 



the best blood and treasure of the state 
before it was accomplished. 

In spite of the illustrious warning given 
by M. Curtius, there lives not a man with 
soul so dead as not to be fired with am- 
bition to make dry ground out of his 
meadow, if he is so unlucky as to own 
one ; and he always starts in with figures 
on paper to show what a fine income of 
hay is to result from a comparatively small 
investment of labor and gravel. But the 
work goes on, then more work and more 
gravel, till finally the account of this part 
of the business gets mislaid, so that by 
the time the far distant hay crop begins to 
materialize, a haze has settled over the 
amount of capital (literally) sunk, and 
only the hay returns are brought promi- 
nently to the front. 

When we first surveyed the half acre or 
so of salt-grass which had been left over 
on our side of the fence when the road 
was built across the meadow, it did not 
seem of much importance, one way or the 
other. The English grass grew luxuriantly 
down to the edge of it, and the soft, fine 
salt-hay was excellent for bedding, the 
126 



Reclaiming a Salt Meadow 

only objection being that it was so palata- 
ble that the horses ate up their mattress 
before breakfast every morning. 

After the causeway was constructed 
across the wet ground behind the stable 
to Winter Street, there did not seem very 
much reason for meddling further with 
the marsh, but given a gravel-bank at one 
end of a farm, and a swamp at the other, 
and you may depend upon it there will be 
a marriage between them at no very dis- 
tant date. 

The intercourse between the two of our The hui 

• , ■, 11- and the 

acquamtance, once begun, was seldom m- marsh i?i- 
terrupted ; the more the meadow saw of ^^'^""^'"^y- 
the hill the more it wanted to see, and, 
with a perversity only to be found in mea- 
dows, the more it was given the more it 
wanted of the same kind. 

At first it seemed as if a few cartloads 
of stones dumped in the lowest parts, 
where the water stood longest, would be 
all-sufficient, but the amount of material 
that this anaconda of a marsh can stow 
away is, to use the slang of the day, phe- 
nomenal. 

Piles of stones, rubbish, sand, boughs, 
127 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

A marsh trunks and roots of trees, old crockery, 

will SWallcTM , 1 1 /I • r 11 

everythhig. ashes, the debris of our own and other 
people's places, it " swallows them all 
without any remorse," till the top of the 
fence along the road has nearly disap- 
peared from view, and still it calls for 
more, and continues to subside. 

Across the street our neighbors have 
tried the experiment before us, so that we 
are aware that it is unsafe to put soil on 
this gravel until after it has had a chance 
to settle for a year or two, otherwise a high 
tide is liable to come and wash away all 
the loam out to sea. 

As the surface rises the fresh water runs 
off less easily, so that the enterprise gains 
in magnitude as it goes along, and the 
space covered promises to turn out a 
whole acre instead of half a one, before 
the job is fairly completed. 

A capacious Still, time and the hill will fill even this 
capacious maw, and, though at present in 
a transition state, the meadow gives prom- 
ise of a beautiful grass field, which, it is 
to be hoped, will repay all the labor of its 
construction. 

The tradition goes that the building of 
128 



maw. 



Reclaiming a Salt Meadow 

the street behind us across his meadow-lot Building a 

was too much for the gentleman who 

owned the place at the time it was made, 

and that he never recovered from the 

shock of having his estate thus divided 

and his house-lot spoiled. The enterprise 

was a formidable one, for it involved the 

construction of a great stone arch across 

the stream that drains the meadow, and 

the laying down of heavy plank rafts for 

the piers of the stone bridge to stand 

upon. For years the road would be built 

up to a good height every summer, and 

then would subside under the influence of 

the high tides in the autumn and spring, 

till it seemed as if it would never hold its 

own, and keep its head above water all 

the year round. 

But constant renewals of the layers of a good 

11 1 1 r • ^ causeway. 

gravel have at length made of it so sub- 
stantial a causeway, that nothing but the 
very highest of spring - tides prevails 
against it, and such water as finds itself 
on our side forces itself rather under than 
over it. 

Those of our neighbors who have re- 
claimed land from the main meadow on 
129 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

Land re- the Other sidc of the road, have done so 
from^the by first building a kind of rough dam of 
marsh. stones and clay, and then gradually filling 
in behind this dam with rubbish and stones 
and sand until they reach the level of the 
street. When properly covered with loam, 
after having had plenty of time to settle, 
this well-watered foundation affords excel- 
lent soil for grass, which grows upon it 
with great luxuriance. 

As the road acts still further for a dam 
between us and the meadow, our task be- 
comes simpler, and we can reclaim our 
piece of land with far less trouble than 
our neighbors have had with theirs, and 
we are encouraged to look for equally 
good results. 

But it is distressing to see the surface 
of the hill, which we would fain see rolling 
in graceful slopes to the swale, waving 
with the forest of our imagination, still 
vexed by the presence of carts and horses, 
and torn by the torturing spade. 
Patience He who undertakes to change the face 

"h^ngetf^" o^ nature must needs have patience. Mon- 
^''"tu'^ archs like Nebuchadnezzar may hang gar- 
dens in the air in a few months, or a 
130 



Reclaiming a Salt Meadow 

Louis Fourteenth may construct a plea- Freakish 
sure-ground like Versailles, by the aid of senu7ruer- 
forty millions and the genius of Lenotre, •^*''^''''^- 
in a few years ; but one who has not the 
resources of an empire at command must 
imitate more closely Nature's own deliber- 
ate and tortuous methods, often seeing 
the labor of years destroyed in a moment 
by an unforeseen freak of the old dame, 
who resents being interfered with, or find- 
ing to his dismay that his own scheme 
has been a mistaken one, and must be 
revised. 

An illustrious townsman of ours started 
like ourselves with a bit of salt meadow, 
in which he laboriously constructed a 
pond, spending his hours of ease from 
the cares of state in building a wall about 
it, to make a neat and appropriate curb. 
But after this was accomplished, with 
much trouble, it proved not to be at all 
what he wanted, so that there was nothing 
for it but to fill the hole, and with months 
of labor bring the meadow into a smoothly 
turfed field. 

Our day of repentance has not yet ThemarsK'i 
dawned, but we have a fear that it lurks jaws. 
131 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



Her malice. 



Loveliness 
of the 
view in 
spring. 



somewhere behind the horizon. Some 
modern Metius Curtius may yet have to 
be found to help fill up the marsh with a 
horse and wagon, for that Charybdis has 
already taken toll more than once from a 
dump-cart, though she has not yet suc- 
ceeded in swallowing it up in spite of vari- 
ous malicious efforts. She has designs 
upon the cow, only frustrated by careful 
watchfulness, and to her deep treachery 
there is no end. The family purse she 
long ago put in her pocket, and her mouth 
yawns for all the future revenues that 
may accrue for her benefit. She has eaten 
up a large part of a neighbor's hill, be- 
sides taking most unbecoming bites out of 
our own, and if ever future generations 
weave a legend about the ancient dragon 
of Overlea, which demanded a victim every 
summer, it will be traced by the unraveler 
of myths of the period, to the unremitting 
appetite of this hungry meadow. 

But who, looking out on some sweet 
spring day upon that beguiling distance, 
could believe ill of anything so softly 
lovely as the picturesque marsh of which 
our field is the fag-end. In the foreground, 
132 



Reclaiming a Salt Meadow 

the richest tones of green are gently 
blending in the grass ; in the middle dis- 
tance a point runs out towards the stream, 
laden with fruit-trees in snowy bloom ; the 
Willows near and far are putting on their 
gray-green coats, making a tender shim- 
mer around their swaying branches and 
graceful twigs. The little river winds, blue The wind- 

irig river . 

and full, here and there amid the grassy 
stretches, and the distant hills are full of 
opalescent hues of emerald and pearl, 
with red of tree-stems, and faintest green 
hints of foliage, such as Monet would 
love to paint. The houses of the port, 
not yet quite veiled by leaves, make spots 
of white and yellow and red against the 
deepening background of Elms and Ma- 
ples. A streak of blue still indicates the 
harbor ; by to-morrow it will have disap- 
peared, for the vision changes like a kalei- 
doscope, — the white of Pear blossoms 
passing like a cloud, to be succeeded by 
the rosy blush of Apple buds. Each day 
some well-known feature of the winter 
landscape grows fainter as the leaves ex- 
pand, till of a sudden you look for it and 
it has gone, and in its stead are the full- 
133 



cent. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

robed trees. Over all domes a blue sky 
streaked with faint white cirrus clouds, 
only the azure reflected in the placid 
stream below. 
A picture An impressionist alone could catch this 

exquisite, 

butevanes- fleeting beauty of early May — to-day one 
thing, to-morrow another — and fix it eter- 
nally upon his canvas. The tender grace 
of early spring, and the glowing glory of 
autumn are alike evanescent and wonder- 
ful expressions on this smiling meadow 
face. Like a dream, this hint of ineiifable 
beauty melts away, and the impression 
gives place to a reality of vivid green field 
and dark blue water, which will make but 
a pleasant inland landscape until the Au- 
gust sun burnishes it into ruby and gold, 
and makes it once more a vision for a 
painter. 

The exquisite must perforce be evanes- 
cent, that no touch of commonness may 
mar its distinction. " The tender grace 
of a day that is dead " haunts many a 
spot, otherwise tame enough, with a mem- 
ory and a knowledge of its capabilities, 
that make it forever dear and beautiful to 
him who has seen it under that enchant- 
134 



Reclaiming a Salt Meadow 

ing glamour lent by a season, or an hour, Memory of 
which imprints upon the brain a picture ^^''"'^• 
that can never be forgotten. And when 
at other times of year I look upon this far 
reach of often - changing meadow, there 
abides with it always a memory of the soft 
and tender charm of early spring, that no 
reality of November-brown or winter-snow 
can wholly drive away. 

135 



XII 
TERRACES AND SHRUBS 



How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
Be reckoned, but with shrubs and flowers ? 

Marvell. 



XII 




ONTINUING our practical ef- The lot too 

. . , small for a 

forts, we were moved to enlarge house. 
\\^^^M around our dwelling the space 

which, after a year's occupation, 
we found rather too contracted to be en- 
tirely satisfactory; for, though we have 
no especial preference for terraces, which 
used to form a feature of many old-fash- 
ioned homes, the conditions of our house- 
lot have forced them upon us on three 
sides. As I have before stated, the flat 
top of the knoll is very limited in extent, 
so that, even in building, we were forced 
to cut our coat according to our cloth, and 
support the rear of the house with a high 
basement, to serve for laundry, dairy, and 
other offices, instead of adding the more 
usual L, or wing. 

The width of the lot at this point would 
not allow of more than ninety feet be- 
tween us and the highway, even by set- 

139 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



How it was 
remedied. 



Fault in tJu 
tnain ap- 
proach. 



ting the building as far back as possible ; 
and when this was done, leaving a gentle 
slope from the front door to the road, the 
ground on the north and south sides of 
house fell with such abruptness from the 
foundations that no room was left even 
for a passage-way. 

This lack was remedied on the north of 
the house by constructing a terrace suffi- 
ciently wide on top for a tree or two, and 
some shrubbery to mask the foundations, 
with plenty of space for climbing things 
to grow over the veranda. This bank, 
supported on the east by the heavy wing- 
wall of the house, slopes to a driveway 
below, which leads to the stable behind. 
It is high and steep, but well sodded, and 
rather adds to the commanding effect of 
the house, beside serving to break the 
height of the building at the back. A 
flight of steps at the rear of the veranda 
leads to the drive below, and some good- 
sized Pines have been planted there to 
still further hide the basement. 

The main approach was not planned 
with sufficient consideration for anything 
but convenience, and consists of a semi- 
140 



Terraces and Shrubs 



circular driveway to allow the house to be 
easily reached from both ends of the town, 
but it would be better if the front door 
were only accessible from the north to 
carriages, which would give us an un- 
broken stretch of grass on the east and 
south, whereas now there is a half-moon 
of greensward in front, inclosed between 
the driveway and the street, thickly 
planted with trees, destined soon to form 
an effectual screen betwen us and the 
dusty road. 

South of the house, near the highway, wv con- 
the ground slopes gently into the swale, terrace. 
which, with its groups of trees, forms a 
side lawn of uneven surface, bounded at 
the rear by the hill, with its rising tiers 
of little Pines. Near the dwelling, how- 
ever, in order to get any greensward or 
shade at all, we were forced to build, 
of stones and gravel, a terrace some 
twenty-five feet in width at its narrowest 
part, to support which about two hundred 
feet or more of- massive wall were con- 
structed. This wall is low in front, and 
buries itself in the grassy slope, but where 
it curves around the knoll at the rear, it 
141 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

is six feet high, and makes a warm back- 
ground for Grapevines, and the hot-beds, 
which are placed below the vines, fronting 
the south. A steep bank, thickly sodded, 
descends from the level of the lawn to the 
top of the wall, which is also covered 
with turf. This sunny south terrace is 
the very spot for the old-fashioned Rose 
bushes which we have transplanted hither 
from the other parts of the place, and 
here, too, is a bed for more delicate speci- 
mens, which can be protected by a glass 
frame in the winter-time, as well as a tree 
to shade the south windows from the heat. 
The wall was quite an important con- 
struction, and I am afraid to say how 
many tons of stone went into it, for the 
largest portion of it is underground, the 
results being very solid and substantial. 
Other ter- Behind the house, on the basement- 

level, is still another curved terrace, from 
which a grassy cart-path leads down to 
the swale and the hot-beds, and here the 
various walls are utilized to protect rows 
of Currant bushes above, and Raspberry 
bushes below, which are easy of access 
from the kitchen-door. 
142 



races. 



Terraces and Shrubs 



To cover all this expanse of gravel Much ham 
foundation required untold quantities of ^^^"'^' ' 
loam, so much, indeed, that we thought 
ourselves fortunate if we could allow an 
average of four inches over the whole sur- 
face of the lawn, but this meagre allow- 
ance seems to afford sufficient hold for 
the grass-roots, and heavy annual dress- 
ings of compost add continually to its 
depth. It is rather a curious study to 
watch the formation of soil, and the grad- 
ual way in which the sand below is trans- 
formed by the roots — first into yellow, 
and then into black loam. How long, we 
wonder, will it take before a foot of soil 
is obtained over a surface treated as this 
lawn is treated, the fine grass dropped 
from the lawn-mower being left upon it 
without raking, and the drainage from the 
heavily enriched trees always helping it 
along, in addition to its own annual dress- 
ings ? 

The shrubs on the knoll, at first scat- impossible u 

,1 inass afevj 

tered about rather promiscuously, as they shrubs. 
increase in size we are struggling to group 
properly, according to the lights thrown 
upon this subject by our reading, but the 
143 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



Lack of 
material. 



A sketch in 
shrubs. 



articles we have carefully studied on this 
topic presuppose a great number of bushes 
of one kind to begin with, and where you 
have perhaps three Golden Spiraeas, and 
a half dozen Lilac bushes, and a hardy 
Hydrangea or two, and a few Deutzias, 
and Weigelias, and other heterogeneous 
things in variety, the question is to set 
them so that they will produce the effect 
of twenty-five of each. We have managed 
it so that really the shrubbery appears 
rather crowded, but it has been done in a 
manner to horrify the authorities. 

We have treated our landscape very 
much as a painter would his canvas. We 
dab in a shrub where we think it will pro- 
duce the effect of half a dozen, and if, 
after a few months, the picture seems to 
require its removal, out it is scratched, 
and set in another spot, and thus, in true 
amateur fashion, we feel our way toward 
a final result, for we find things never 
look when they are little as they do when 
they are fairly grown, — the usual experi- 
ence of amateur gardeners. 

The best that can be said for this 
method is, that the results are unconven- 
144 



Terraces and Shrubs 



tional. I have discovered that a land- Mannerism 

, . of the pro- 

scape-gardener gets a style, a mannerism, fessionai 
like a poet or a draughtsman, and that, ^"^^ ^'^' 
after some experience, you can detect the 
professional manufacturer of a garden by 
the receipts on which he works. Twenty- 
five Spiraeas here, twenty Deutzias there, 
Viburnums one dozen, Lilacs in variety, 
Forsythias eight; a bushel or two of golden 
Evergreens mixed with Juniper and Ar- 
bor Vit^, at such a point ; a hedge here, 
curves on this side, straight lines on that, 
etc., etc., — it is all reduced to a system, 
and the results, if repeated in the same 
town, are monotonous. 

We are bound, having gone in for it, to 
defend the natui;al method. If the results 
of the artificial are more satisfactory, the 
execution is not half the fun. 

Can there be, I ask you, the same en- 
joyment in sitting down to watch the 
growth of a border of shrubs that some- 
body has set out for you, that there is in 
dragging the few you have planted your- 
self out of their holes and transporting 
them to a more becoming place, as you 
would a flower on a bonnet .-' 
145 



The Rescue of an Old Place 
Wegivetmr Anvbodv Can put in a tree or a shrub 

shrubs an -^ . •' 

airing. and let it alone, but it takes nerve to 
wheel it about like a baby in a go-cart. 

We have neighbors who employ the 
conventional methods with dazzling re- 
sults, but, on the whole, we doubt if their 
vast and imposing plantations give them 
as much enjoyment as our more personal 
intercourse with our little family of grow- 
ing things. We are quite sure that each 
scrubby little Pine on the hill is dearer to 
us than a thicket of well-fed trees planted 
by a nurseryman. 
Parabif of " You will know my children," said the 
f^owi^and Owl to the Fox, with whom she had made 
a compact to spare them, " by their being 
the most beautiful little darlings in the 
whole world." But when the Fox came 
to the nest full of big-eyed, long-billed, 
unfledged frights, he failed to recognize 
the description, and ate them all up un- 
der a misapprehension. De nobis fabula. 
We are afraid that most people would 
pronounce in favor of the upholstering of 
the professional, rather than of our pri- 
vate efforts at lawn-furnishing, but we can 
recommend our method on the ground of 
146 



Terraces and Shrubs 



economy, both of material and of amuse- Our shrubs 
ment, for there is no reason why this play move t^ a 
should not go on forever, like a Wagner cJIzen."^^ 
opera. It has its surprises too, in the way 
of some happy effect that you had not im- 
agined, and again, you are horrified at the 
outcome of some arrangement that seemed 
felicitous. We have got our own shrubs 
so beautifully trained now, that they do 
not mind moving on the first of May, any 
more than an old New York citizen. Up 
they come, blossoms and all, and never 
drop a petal, but go on blooming se- 
renely in their new home as if they had 
always been there. One spring we had 
from a kind friend a present of a box of 
rare and beautiful little shrubs, the very 
names of which it took a day to look up. 
We knew they were coming, but not what 
they were to be, so a bed was prepared 
for them within easy reach of the hose, 
and, when they came, they were set out 
carefully, in the midst of an April snow- 
storm, and a cold wind, which nipped 
their poor little half-opened leaves most 
cruelly. 

After they were all arranged, and the 
147 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

A muddle of wcather had moderated sufficiently for 
one to study the labels, we found that the 
arrangement would have driven a gardener 
wild; future trees, a hundred feet high, hav- 
ing been set side by side with burly little 
shrubs, which at present look much more 
important than their (to be) stately neigh- 
bors. What with snow one day, and burn- 
ing heat the next, combined with steady 
dry weather, those shrubs have had a strug- 
gle for existence, in which they have been 
sturdily abetted by their natural protec- 
tors. The hose one minute, and newspa- 
pers and branches of trees the next, were 
called upon to supply the deficiencies of 
Nature, who was more than ever capricious 
during that extraordinary season, and 
since at the end of the summer they were 
all well and firmly established, it shows 
what care will do to defy the inclemen- 
cies of the weather. After a year or two 
they will have acquired the customs of the 
place sufficiently to be moved where they 
will make the best show, but before they 
reach their final resting-place it is possible 
that they may have several halts by the 
way. With a ball of earth attached to the 
148 



Terraces and Shrubs 



roots, traveling does not seem to hurt 
them much, though no doubt it retards 
their growth somewhat, which is all the 
better if they are to be kept in proper pro- 
portion to the place, which is not adapted 
to anything very gigantic. 

Of one thing I have become certain in Leaking 
this limitea experience of landscape-gar- 
dening, and that is, that the pleasure is in 
the doing, in the vision of the mind, in the 
ever-expanding hope for the future. When 
the trees have grown too large to move, 
and the shrubs are irrevocably rooted, we 
shall surely be no happier than now, when 
they are viewed in a halo of imagination. 
149 



XIII 
EVERGREENS JN SPRING 



" Come to me," 

Quoth the Pine-tree, 
" I am the giver of honor. 

My garden is the cloven rock 

And my manure the snow ; 

And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, 

In summer's scorching glow." 

Emerson. 

O Hemlock Tree ! O Hemlock Tree ! 

How faithful are thy branches ! 
Green not alone in summer time, 

But in the winter's frost and rime. 

Longfellow. 



XIII 




UT the question arises, will those Depressing 

!• I 1 1 Ml sight of con- 

little trees on the hill ever at- i/ersin 
tain a satisfactory growth ? We ^^^"^' 



have various opinions on this 
matter, our answer being more or less af- 
fected by the season at which it is put, — 
we have a few ups, and a good many more 
downs about it. For instance, I know few 
things more depressing than the sight of 
conifers in May, when every deciduous 
tree is putting its best foot foremost, and 
giving promise of a fine crop of leaves. 
The Pines and Spruces and Firs which 
have gladdened our eyes all winter, with 
their fine green masses relieved against 
the snow, or standing up bravely from the 
brown grass in rich contrast to the bar- 
renness around, now begin to show the 
sere and yellow leaf. The March sun 
and w^inds have burned and browned their 
tips, the winter storms have buffeted their 
153 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

branches, and torn great gaps in their out- 
line. Their new shoots are all hidden un- 
der a little tight white, or yellow, or brown 
nightcap that looks dried and wizened, as 
if no promise of life lurked underneath. 

When the snow melts .sufficiently for 
one to walk abroad among his plantations, 
he views them with a feeling akin to de- 
spair, so unlikely do they seem to recover 
themselves. Some branches are entirely 
dead, the tops of others are winter-killed, 
a few have turned copper-color from root 
to crown, and, beside the bright green of 
bursting buds and springing grass, the 
best of them look worn and dingy by con- 
trast. 
They pluck Not Until the middle of May do they 
tpiritl^ pluck up their spirits, pull off their bon- 
nets, and show that their apparent dead- 
ness resulted from the fact that they take 
their season dift'erently from their gayer 
neighbors, and wear their winter furs, 
however rusty and inappropriate, far into 
spring, while all the others have come out 
in their new clothes of brightest hue. 
Some years June will be here before they 
condescend to put out the green tassels 
154 



Evergreens in Spring 



which are their first adornment, but 
through the month of roses they do their 
prettiest, and hang out their banners with 
the best. 

Some of the authorities recommend the Planting in 
month of June as the most desirable for ^""' 
transplanting evergreens, but my experi- 
ence would lead me to the conclusion 
that with them, as well as vi^ith hard-wood 
trees, the period before the bursting of 
the buds is more satisfactory than the 
time when they have already begun to 
swell. Seasons vary so decidedly that a 
few warm days may hasten the new 
shoots, and they may be three inches long 
before you think of going for trees, so 
that they droop discouragingly after trans- 
planting, and sometimes never brace up 
again. This is particularly the case with 
Pines, which have a way of drooping their 
little brown heads despairingly, and refus- 
ing to stiffen, in which case, if they can- 
not be freely watered, they are sure to die. 

This year the warm days in April so Pines need 

• 1 1 n 1 water. 

quickened all vegetable life, that, when 
we set forth in the middle of May in 
search of new trees for the hill, we found 

155 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

to our surprise that the green tassels on 
some of the trees were as long as one's 
finger, which gave us a pang lest we were 
already too late for the best satisfaction. 
n^eg-oi7t However, as there had been already 

"fresh Pines, somc six wccks of unprcccdcntedly dry 
weather, and signs of rain were in the 
atmosphere, it seemed that if there was 
any chance at all, now was our time. We 
accordingly arranged for a morning among 
the Pines, and, accompanied by a big 
farm-wagon to bring them home in, we 
wended our way along the winding coun- 
try roads, until we came to where the 
young trees abounded, and we could select 
our specimens. 

There is little doubt that the stocky, 
bushy trees of close, heavy foliage, not 
more than two or three feet high, are the 
most likely to live and do well, but there 
are days when one's ambition outruns 
one's discretion, and, revolting at the slow- 
ness of the growth of the little ones, he 
desires to realize his forest immediately, 
if only for one summer, and so, like a 
child who plants his sand-garden with 
blooming flowers, ventures on a load of 
156 



Evergreens in Spring 



trees. 



trees five or six feet high, in hopes that, 
after making a brave show for a few 
months, they will be aided by some happy 
freak of nature to take root in earnest. 

But planting Pines on a dry hillside is a lottery in 
like investing in a lottery — the success 
of the enterprise depends wholly on the 
sort of weather that immediately follows, 
and who can reckon with that ? Talk of 
the vicissitudes in the life of a broker — 
what are his uncertain and incalculable 
quantities compared to those with which 
the farmer and gardener have to deal ? A 
broker can abstain from buying bonds 
and stocks if he will, but the farmer has 
to plant when the time comes, and take 
his chances, and for surprises the weather 
can give points to Wall Street any day. 
With the largest experience and judgment 
you can no more reckon securely on the 
coming down of rain, than of Bell Tele- 
phone, or Calumet and Hecla. 

No sooner are one's trees planted than 
he becomes a bear upon the weather mar- 
ket, but this summer. Old Probabilities 
has made a corner with the bulls, and 
kept rain up persistently, so that the wisest 
157 



drive. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

calculations have gone agley ; and if Paul 
plants, and Apollos declines to water, 
what then ? 
A forest To rctum to our expedition. There 

was an easterly tang in the air, a smell of 
rain that promised well for the morrow, 
though in the shelter of the trees all was 
warmth and sunshine, and bursting buds. 
Upon the rocks the Lady's -slipper was 
waving its rosy blossoms, tempting us to 
add a few roots of it to our shady garden, 
where it has thriven well. The Beeches 
and Birches were full of crumpled leaflets. 
Anemones were blooming by the wayside, 
the oak-tops were reddened with the flush 
of early leaf -buds, the forest was astir. 
Along the fences ran the busy chipmunks, 
saucily chattering, with their bushy tails 
trailing behind them. The wood robins 
were singing in the thickets, and the 
thrushes challenging us from wayside 
bushes. In northern Maine one hears al- 
ways in summer the tender song of the 
Peabody bird in such places, but here it 
occurs but seldom, and I missed it from 
the woodland sounds, of which the air was 
full. The Witch-hazel stared at us with 
158 



Evergreens in Spring 



its wicked-looking eyes, and the Hemlocks 

hid themselves behind the Alders. 

When at last we came to the clearing, ivecome 

r JTT • lii-i. c ^ home ivith a 

we found Pmes in plenty, but, unfortu- loado/ uttie 
nately, the soil was rocky, and the trees ^''""' 
were hard to dislodge, and did not come 
up with as good a ball of earth as in the 
sandy hill where we had found them be- 
fore ; but we packed them well away in 
the cart, with moss about their roots, and 
a rubber blanket to keep off the sun, and 
pretty soon the wagon was nodding with 
trees four or five feet high, closely jammed 
together, and Birnam Wood was on the 
march for Dunsinane. 

The hill had been dug the day before, 
and some twoscore holes prepared for the 
new-comers, so that by noon-time those 
of the first load were all firmly wedged 
into their beds, to be staked and tied later, 
to prevent their rocking with the wind, 
which gives them at present quite the air 
of a paddock of frisky young colts, care- 
fully hitched to prevent their getting away. 

That night there was a brisk and most 
encouraging shower, and the next day, 
after the rest of the holes had been filled 
159 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

with a second load of Pines, there came 
down quite a respectable rain, so that we 
greatly plumed ourselves upon our fore- 
sight in having got our trees in the nick 
of time, just as the drought "broke." 
Disap- But, alas, for the prescience of man, and 

" "'"" ' for our corner in Pines ! We mulched 
them all well with sea-weed, to keep in 
what moisture we might, and waited confi- 
dently for more rain ; but no rain came ! 
Two weeks more of dry weather ensued ; 
many of the green tassels hung sadly 
down, a cold, dry wind blew, twisting and 
turning them in every direction, and mer- 
cilessly whipped the branches about, — 
giving the poor things a cruel foretaste of 
what they are likely to encounter as time 
goes on. If the new trees look about upon 
their well-rooted neighbors, they must be 
struck with the havoc made upon them 
by the northwest wind. It is always the 
northwest side of a tree that is brownest 
and thinnest, and which shows the most 
broken branches, and the greatest number 
of withered, copper-colored spines. 

Not until the last of May did the rain 
come down in earnest, too late for any 
i6o 



Evergreens in Spring 



but the most healthy of the Pines to reap 
the benefit of its invigorating freshness, 
and they still had the hot summer before 
them. 

. To show the importance of moisture to a tree 
a Pine, I will add that among the trees 
brought, there were about a dozen that 
had no ball of earth attached to them, 
and reached here with perfectly bare 
roots. Knowing it was useless to set 
them on the hill in this condition, they 
were all planted in a very wet place at the 
foot of it, which is kept as a nursery for 
decrepit and rootless trees. If from any- 
where we receive a tree poorly provided 
with roots, or of drooping and unhappy 
aspect, or if we bring one home that 
looks unpromising, into that moist spot it 
goes, and never a tree has perished there 
yet, no matter how forlorn a specimen it 
was when it went into the ground. This 
nursery is called the Tree Hospital, and 
we find a year in it is a cure for most of 
the ailments that roots are heir to. 

In this last experiment, the ten trees 
planted there, though quite the worst of 
the lot, never showed a sign of wilting 
i6i 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

through all the dry weather. Their tassels 
stood up straight and stiff, of a clean 
bright green, and, though so unpromising 
to start with, they will probably in the end 
leave the others far behind. Even the 
Hemlocks, so troublesome on the lawn, 
thrive in this low and sheltered spot, where 
we have finally sent the worst of them for 
repairs. I have been told, by one who 
knows, that what the Hemlock cannot 
abide is the March sun, which does mis- 
chief, while the blaze of summer is harm- 
less to it. 
Hetniocks at I w^as shown One day at the Arnold 
Arboretum. Arborctum, near Boston, the north side 
of a hill, steep and rocky, but clothed with 
giant Hemlocks from its lofty summit to 
the burbling beck at its base. No nobler 
sight can be imagined. I entered this 
forest at twilight, and I found it a temple, 
solemn and silent. The majestic trunks 
'rose from their rocky base at wide inter- 
vals, climbing one above the other to the 
crest of the lofty eminence they crowned. 
Their close-knit branches far overhead 
formed a dense canopy through which the 
failing light came dimly, as befits a tem- 
162 



Evergreens in Spring 



pie. So wild, so sylvan a spot, within the No foreign 

,. . . . , , , . park shows 

limits of a great city, can be found in no such a sight. 
European park, however magnificent. It 
is unique and singularly imposing. On 
the southern slope of that hill no Hem- 
lock grows, showing that what this noble 
tree demands for full development is shade 
and coolness, and shelter from summer 
winds, which burn and blight. That 
glimpse of ancient woodland, ages old, 
will always linger in my memory as a link 
between the bustling present and the si- 
lent past. The busy city presses around 
it, the hum of traffic is near. You step 
aside from the highway, pass a gate, cross 
a tiny brook that tumbles as carelessly at 
the foot of the hill as if it were racing 
through the wilds of Colorado, and you 
enter a domain apparently as remote, ven- 
erable, and silent as when the Indian was 
the sole occupant of Shawmut and found 
his way through the trackless forest to his 
hunting-grounds. A little path worn by 
the foot strays along beside the laughing 
stream ; other paths may lead over the 
hill, but in the dimness I failed to see 
them, and the solitude seemed unbroken. 
163 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



The forest 
at dusk. 



The Direc- 
tor looks 
forward. 



Night was falling, the air was chill, the 
murmur of the leaves far above was barely 
audible ; the impression was indescribably 
solemn and church-like, as if the aisles of 
some great cathedral were there stretch- 
ing away into the shadowy distance, full 
of mystery. 

Stately and strong the old trees stood, 
as if they might be as eternal as the rocks 
and hill, and beautiful they were in their 
silent majesty, uplifting their venerable 
heads to the gray evening sky which had 
domed over them for centuries. 

On an opposite hill a grove of young 
evergreens was springing up, 

" That, too, will be fine in a hundred 
years," said the Director, as we passed out 
of the great gate ; and, with a thought of 
my baby forest at home which, perhaps, 
in a century or two, may be worth while, 
I went away grave but rejoicing, for I had 
seen a noble sight. 

164 



XIV 

THE LOVE OF FLOWERS LN 
AMERLCA 



Fables were not more 
Bright, nor loved of yore ; 
Yet they grew not, like the flowers, by every old 
pathway. 

Leigh Hunt. 



M 




XIV 

'HILE we and our neighbors are A/aise 
doing our best to stock 
grounds with ornamental shrubs 
and blossoms, it is discouraging 
to be told by some of our periodicals, 
which are probably edited by gentlemen 
who live chiefly in towns, that Americans 
do not love flowers, because they are 
used among the rich and fashionable in 
reckless profusion, for display rather than 
enjoyment. It is also claimed that w-e are 
not a flower-loving people, because we 
accept botanical appellations for our indi- 
genous plants, instead of giving them sim- 
ple, homely names like the charming ones 
with which familiar flowers have been 
christened in older countries. 

To this may be answered, that what os- 
tentatious dwellers in towns are guilty of is 
by no means to be accepted as a national 
trait. The place to study the characteris- 
167 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



Au old New tics of a peoplc is not among the very 

England • i i • • 

town. rich, but among those m moderate cir- 

cumstances, who make up the bulk of 
the inhabitants ; those who occupy its 
longer settled regions, and best represent 
its individual and continuous modes of 
thought. And when I see how little these 
idle talkers know about what country peo- 
ple feel and think, I wish that our urban 
critics could walk though this ancient 
town, and be introduced to its flower 
lovers, and get a glimpse of its interesting 
gardens, before they make up their minds 
so positively about the tendencies of our 
people. Here can be found the American 
race at its best, unadulterated by foreign 
admixture, or perverted from its instincts 
by the pressure of conventions ; a people 
that has lived on the soil for two hundred 
and fifty years, and has had time to de- 
velop its characteristics, — a much better 
test to judge by than the floating popula- 
tion of newer towns farther west. 

Whoever has driven through New Eng- 
land or the older middle States, cannot 
doubt that there, at least, the people truly 
love their gardens, and the house plants 
i68 



A test of 
A nierica?t 
character. 



ne Love of Flowers in America 

with which their windows, in winter, are widespread 
stocked. Even the humblest dwelling has flc^°ers. 
its row of flower pots, or tin cans, well 
filled with slips of Geranium, or other 
bright flowers ; and the hours spent over 
their gardens by gentlewomen who can- 
not afford a gardener, are the best proof 
that the affection they have for them is a 
real and ardent one. I have known many 
a house mother, burdened with domestic 
cares, to rise before day to snatch an hour 
for weeding or watering her little border, 
that its fragrant contents might be of avail 
for a friendly gift, or an adornment for 
her own table. It is the rarest thing, in a 
New England village, to enter a room in 
summer and find no flowers disposed about 
it ; and in the winter the eager question, 
" How are your plants prospering ? " often 
comes before the conventional inquiries 
after the health of the members of the 
household. New varieties are discussed 
and exchanged ; there are rare Chrysan- 
themums to talk about in autumn, and 
choice Tulips and Hyacinths to be com- 
plimented in the spring, and each one 
knows what her neighbor's garden is most 
169 



ntsts. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

famous for, and who is the most success- 
ful in her general management of her pets. 
ji;a„y Many women are experienced botanists 

^r°ie'ncedbita- '"^ their own locality, and can tell where 
every wild flower of the region is to be 
found. They rejoice, too, in the discov- 
ery of a new weed with as much enthusi- 
asm as an astronomer shows over a fresh 
comet. Most of the men who live in the 
country are too busy to give much time to 
flower-gardens, but they show great inter- 
est and pride in those so carefully tended 
by their wives and daughters, and are ready 
enough to lend a helping hand, even though 
they may pretend to begrudge the space 
taken from grass or vegetables, for what 
they think it their duty to call an idle 
diversion. But given a retired merchant 
with not much to occupy his mind, and the 
chances are that he will soon be wearing 
himself out in loving labor among his 
Rhododendrons and Roses, taking pride 
in having the earliest and largest blossoms 
in his parterre, and conferring in a friendly 
way over the fence with his neighbors, who 
stop to consult with him on the best way 
of dealing with insect pests. Of course, 
170 



made bright. 



The Love of Flowers in America 

in the remoter West, life is too strenuous 

to leave much space for flower-gardening. 

Flowers are often seen growing in a little 

inclosure on a frontier sheep-ranch, which 

cost not only labor but self-denial, and yet 

they are hardly seen once a year by any 

save their owner. The care which it cost New homes 

the mothers and daughters among the 

early emigrants to transport seeds, and 

slips, and roots of the old home flowers 

from New England, to brighten new homes 

in the West, has often been described, 

and the love with which these flowers are 

cherished by their descendants is well 

known. 

It is to these people we must look to 
discover whether the love of flowers and 
gardening is implanted in a people, not to 
the wasteful and luxurious dweller in the 
town, who only uses flowers as a pretext 
for wanton expense. It should not be 
forgotten that aside from this extrava- 
gance, which may show itself in the pur- 
chase of flowers, as in the purchase of 
other luxuries, simply because they may 
be rare and costly, great numbers of peo- 
ple in the city buy flowers habitually 
171 



71?^ Rescue of an Old Place 

because they love their beauty and fra- 
grance. 
The common As to the nomenclature there is this to 
"flowers. be said : In older countries the people and 
the flowers lived together long before the 
botanist appeared, while here the bota- 
nists came with the early settlers to an 
unexplored field, found the new flowers, 
and named them before the people had 
become familiarly acquainted with them. 
The State flower of California was intro- 
duced to the children of that common- 
wealth as the Eschscholtzia before they 
could spell it, but this does not prove 
any lack of love or admiration for it on 
their part. They have a pet name for the 
flower, too ; and in all the older settled 
parts of the country, wherever a plant or 
flower is so abundant, or useful, or obtru- 
sive that there is need to speak of it, a 
name is found at once. The children of 
New England call the wild Columbine 
Meeting-houses, from their shape, no 
doubt, and with them Viola pedata is the 
Horse Violet, perhaps from its long face. 
The Houstonia, which is Bluets in some 
places, is Innocence in others. In north- 
172 



The Love of Flowers in America 

em New Jersey, the Marsh Marigold of 
other regions {Caltha palustris) is invaria- 
bly a Cowslip. Some children, gathering Pet names 
Dogtooth Violets by the handful within Viemby 
sight of Trinity Church spire, when asked 
the name of the flowers, expressed much 
surprise that the inquirer had never heard 
of Yellow-bells. Even Shortia, which hid 
away from botanists for a hundred years, 
had a name which was common enough 
to answer every purpose, and the man 
who first discovered it in any quantity 
was told by the dwellers in the mountain 
hamlet, where it was spreading over acres, 
that it was nothing but Little Coltsfoot. 
Even where botanical names have not 
been adopted outright as common ones, 
they have often been changed, just as 
Pyxidanthera has become Pyxie to all the 
dwellers among the New Jersey Pines. 
There are plenty of common names in 
every locality which have never found 
their way into the botanies. 

American women wear flowers for adorn- 
ment more generally than the women of 
any other country. This of itself is proof 
of the genuineness of their love for flow- 
173 



fashion. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

ers. It is absurd to imagine that a custom 
so universal is based on any sham or pass- 
ing fashion. The desire for display is 
prevalent enough, beyond question, but if 
any one doubts whether the admiration 
for flowers is an acquired taste — because 
Wearing of it is fashionable to wear them — let him 

Jlo^uers not i r i r i i i 

a mere Carry a handful of them through a city 

street among groups of children, where 
unsophisticated nature will find expres- 
sion. The keen delight of these little 
ones, who will always accept such a gift, 
shows that the affection for flowers is an 
original instinct, which is as strong in this 
country as it is anywhere. Fashionable 
freaks and follies pass away, and flowers 
would have their brief day like any other 
craze, if the regard for them was artifi- 
cial or fictitious. The flower-dealers of 
the country need have no apprehension 
as to the future of their industry. It is 
based on one of the elementary wants of 
our nature. Flowers will be loved until 
the constitution of the human mind is 
radically changed. 

To those writers who maintain, quoting 
Miss Wilkins's stories to prove it, that 
174 



The Love of Flowers in America 

" flowers are an accident, not a daily in- The senti- 
terest, in village life " in New England, "NewE?i^- 
I would say that he who takes this ground iTofpiTlded. 
can scarcely be familiar with the old coun- 
try towns of that section to which one 
must look for the typical aspects of New 
England life. Like all the sentiments of 
its people, the love of flowers is there, not 
paraded, but profoundly cherished ; and 
if there is no gaudy display in the door- 
yard, there is sure to be found a corner 
behind the house, easily accessible to the 
kitchen, where old-fashioned plants bloom 
gayly, and are cherished often from some 
tender association with the past. Any 
country doctor in one of the older New 
England villages can tell these critics that 
there are almost no houses so homely, 
but that he finds in them, in winter, a few 
plants in the window, and in summer some 
bright flowers in a tiny garden, cultivated 
and watered often by feeble and tired 
hands. Hard and dreary as are many of 
the poor little lives of New England vil- 
lagers, this one touch of color and per- 
fume is there almost invariably, to show 
that the thirst for beauty is unquenched. 
175 



The Rescue of an Old Place 
New Eng- If, with its ungratcful soil and torment- 

iand loves . t >. xt t-' i i ^ • i 

/lowers as mg climate, New England cannot rival 
^England. O^d England in the gay surroundings of 
its cottage doors, the same love of flowers 
is there, finding such expression as it may, 
under the cruel conditions of a sterile 
earth, and burning summer heats and dry- 
ness, alternated with sharp east winds, 
which make a labor as well as a pleasure 
of a garden. 

176 



XV 
THE ROSE-CHAFER 



All the fields which thou dost see, 
All the plants, belong to thee ; 
All the summer hours produce, 
Fertile made with early juice. 
Man for thee doth sow and plow, 
Farmer he, and landlord thou ! 

Anacreon. 



XV 




UT however much we New Eng- Our summer 
landers may love flowers, there tread upon 

, 1 , . , 1 • 1 , • each other's 

are drawbacks to their cultiva- heeU. 

tion in the pests that beset 
them. Each plant has its enemy, and 
there is no interim between our summer 
visitors. No sooner is the trunk of the 
last caterpillar packed than the rose-bug 
arrives, bag and baggage, to take his place. 
The half-eaten leaves that have been res- 
cued from the jaws of the web-worm are 
in a few hours riddled with the bites of 
these winged pests, which are even harder 
to destroy than their predecessors, for 
they hunt in couples and fly, and cannot 
be stamped out of existence. 

An imperturbable imp is the rose- 
chafer, descendant on one side from the 
scarabffius ; and if his Egyptian ancestor 
was half as hard to kill as this other flying 
beetle, no wonder the ancients used him 
as an emblem of immortality. 
179 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

Timt horrid This voracious summer boarder arrives 
with unpleasant punctuality upon the 
tenth of June, — that is to say, the ad- 
vance-guard of the great army shows it- 
self in the shape of a scout or two, who 
merely precede the main swarm, which 
comes in a cloud, and settles everywhere, 
and stays nearly four weeks. 

The opening roses are their nominal 
prey, and are soon disfigured with their 
dingy yellow-brown carcasses ; but that is 
not the worst of them. Grape blossoms 
are their dear delight, and nothing but the 
most unremitting attention will save the 
future bunches from their greedy depreda- 
tions. There are at least two to every ra- 
ceme of fragrant blossoms, and by the 
time one has disposed of that pair, another 
is flying about all ready to take their 
places. 
Arsenical Arscnical poisons have no more effect 
pohons use- ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^ ^^jj shouMcr on an of- 
fice-seeker. They may kill the plant, but 
never the rose-bug, which will crawl un- 
dismayed over its ruins, seeking new 
worlds to conquer. Having no delicate 
sensibilities, they are undeterred by whale- 
i8o 



The Rose-Chafer 



oil soap, which disheartens most things, They enjoy 
and even a dusting with hellebore does 7oTp^ "' 
not even make them sneeze. The great 
unterrified eat on, in spite of all you can 
do to them, and no sooner is one set slain 
than you find another in its place. They 
remind one of the Jesuit monks in Bolivia, 
whom the inhabitants finally regarded as 
supernatural beings, because, no matter 
how often one cowled and sandaled form 
was laid low, another succeeded it, till the 
natives came to believe that the friar was 
an immortal, whom they vainly sought to 
destroy. 

As to the rose-bug, hand-picking into a ffand-fkk- 

°' ^ ° tng the final 

bowl of kerosene or hot water, begun at resmrce. 
morn, continued till noon, and not inter- 
mitted till dewy eve, is the safest resource 
against the marauders, which devour not 
only Grape blossoms and Roses, Spiraeas 
and Syringas, Peonies and Snowballs, but 
cover Birches, Oaks, Elms, and even Wil- 
lows with their ugly little forms, and 
leave behind them a lacework of veins in 
place of leaves. 

Nothing pleases them better than a 
Smoke bush in blossom, the future fringe 
i8i 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



TSii rose- 
bugs find 
Over lea un- 
healthy. 



of which they will completely destroy in 
a few hours. We tried the experiment 
this year of tying ours up in mosquito-net- 
ting, but it seemed to accomplish nothing 
better than the excitement of the curiosity 
of passers-by, who could not make out 
whether it was a ghost on the lawn, or a 
balloon waiting for a Fourth of July infla- 
tion. The indomitable chafers perched 
on the outside by the hundred, and chewed 
at the blossoms through the meshes, so 
that, what with their attacks and the 
confinement, the smoke came to nothing 
after all, for when the cover was removed 
nothing was to be seen of the fringe but 
a few bare green stems. 

Probably the rose-bugs do not publish 
a morning paper, or they would learn that 
the lawn at Overlea is an unhealthy situa- 
tion for their race, and that their unprece- 
dented mortality in that region ought to 
be a warning to them. Certainly in the 
height of the season the hecatomb of vic- 
tims amounts to a thousand a day, but 
the cry is still, They come. 

We hoped that the long, cold, easterly 
storm of June would prove a discourage- 
182 



The Rose-Chafer 



ment to them, but the minute it stopped Theypre/er 

• ■ . 1 1 old Roses to 

rammg they reappeared, more numerous new. 
and hearty than ever, and made up nobly 
for lost time. They show a curious pref- 
erence for old-fashioned Roses, and will 
devour them, leaving a bed of hybrids of 
modern varieties almost untouched, and 
they never are found here on the Tea 
Roses. They will eat the hardy Hy- 
drangea voraciously, but do not affect the 
Weigelia. They spoil the Snowballs, but 
do not meddle with Lilacs. We have 
some young Canoe Birches that are strug- 
gling for existence, and I always imagine 
the departing caterpillar exchanging com- 
pliments with the arriving rose-bug, and 
recommending them to his particular at- 
tention, after the fashion of guzzling Jack 
and gorging Jimmy : — 

Here 's little Billee, he 's young and tender, 
They 're old and tough, so let 's eat he. 

Positively, if, during three or four weeks They devour 
of their stay, those insects were not fought 
tooth and nail, there would not be one 
leaf left upon those unhappy little trees. 
As it is, when the brutes depart, the 
183 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

Birches look like a design in skeleton 
leaves. 
siudgite. This year our hopes were roused by a 

remedy called siudgite, which was war- 
ranted to kill, not only the rose-bug, but 
the Colorado beetle and all other insects 
fatal to vegetation. Though scoffed at 
by incredulous friends, we dared to send 
for a can of this evil-smelling mixture, and 
applied it to the creature, with whom it 
undoubtedly disagrees. It is made of the 
residue of petroleum and soap, and smells 
to heaven, but, alas ! the rose - bug has 
no nose, — at least no nose that takes 
offense at bad odors. Siudgite is a thick, 
semi-solid substance that mingles readily 
with water and is applied by a spraying 
pump or a hand syringe, and kills by con- 
tact. The rose-bug and the Colorado 
beetle keel over with all their heels in the 
air as soon as the gummy fluid comes in 
contact with their wing coverings, but, 
curiously enough, it seems to have no 
power to destroy the larva of the potato- 
bug, and, not being a poison, it seems to 
have no deterring effect upon the little 
worm that eats the leaves of Rose bushes, 
184 



The Rose-Chafer 



or even upon the thrip, which whale-oil 
soap banishes for a long time. Therefore, 
I judge that the mixture clogs the wings, 
and interferes with the breathing of beetles, 
or, possibly, whatever virtue it possesses 
lies in the volatile essence which escapes 
from it, for the fresh mixture is much 
more deadly than that which has stood 
for some time. 

But the sad thing about its use is, that The rose- 

. . bug draws 

the rose-bug is a bemg that draws no no moral. 
moral from any tale, and he is totally de- 
void of sentiment. I cannot find that the 
corpses of his relations take away from 
his appetite in the least. Possibly the 
numerous attendants we see at the fune- 
ral come for a wake, and they are full as 
hungry and thirsty as Conn the Shaugh- 
raun's cousins, on the same melancholy 
occasion. 

Though I am disposed to think that the 
chafers may not be quite so ready to at- 
tack a bush or tree freshly anointed with 
the unsavory fluid, I am not sure but that 
the wish is father to the thought. In any 
case, it is not practicable to shower a bush 
every five minutes with anything, however 
185 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

deadly, so that it is almost as discourag- 
ing as hand-picking. 
Musde A distinguished horticultural authority, 

worth more , , t i i • i ■ 

thati/aith. who takcs vcry little stock in my new dis- 
coveries, declares that muscle is worth 
more than faith, and shows me perfect 
roses, as large as his fist, to prove it. 
This is all very well if you are lucky 
enough to have unlimited muscle at your 
command, as in an arboretum for instance, 
where every rose-bug has a man to catch 
him, but both hand-picking and insecti- 
cides are alike failures in a private family 
with one factotum. What the world de- 
mands is a warning of some kind that the 
chafer who runs may read, a something to 
convey to his insect-mind or nostrils the 
information that " no rose-bug need ap- 
ply," and whoso can make this discovery 
palpable to the enemy will have his for- 
tune in his red right hand. 

The legends connected with the rose- 
bug are numerous. They tell us that he 
will not molest a Grapevine or a Rose 
bush close against a house, though he will 
devour the Virginia - creeper against the 
lattice of your veranda. He is supposed 
1 86 



77?^ Rose-Chafer 



to object to the dust of the road and to a 
sprinkling of coal-ashes ; but on our own 
windy hill neither of these deterrents can 
be made to stick. 

Another legend belongs to the potato- ^ legend. 
beetle, which some of the farmers in this 
neighborhood vow will not trouble pota- 
toes planted in a hill with beans ; but 
this is merely a legend. We have tried it, 
and find the creatures as lively as ever. 

To return to sludgite, I would say that 
its highest practical use is upon trees and 
shrubs without blossoms, for the sticky yel- 
low fluid cannot be sprinkled upon roses 
without spoiling their fairness. So far it 
does not seem to damage foliage, but we 
cannot answer for the effect of such a vis- 
cid decoction if used many times a day. 
We have never tried it more than twice in 
twenty-four hours. It kills or drives away 
the insects that are there, but others ap- 
pear immediately, so that such insecticides 
are little better than substitutes for hand- 
picking. 

Our struggles with the hated rose-bug, 
and the hopeless nature of any prolonged 
encounter with an inferior organism of 
187 



a sua 



il. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

overwhelming numbers, find such clear 
expression in the words of a correspon- 
dent, that I subjoin an extract from a let- 
ter of a lady who has had similar suffer- 
ings with another insect : — 
Fight with "I am passing through the discourag- 
ing season of gardening, and am realizing 
more than ever the nature of Adam's curse. 
It sounds like a fine thing to be told we 
shall have dominion over the birds of the 
air and the beasts of the field, but what 
gain is there in that if we are to be beaten 
in the end by the angle-worm, the ant, and 
the snail ? To fight with a snail, and be 
beaten, is n't that humilation ? But I stand 
in the place of the vanquished, and it is 
the snail that has done it. I was born 
a sentimentalist, and had scruples about 
' taking away the life thou canst not give,' 
that once hindered my career as a gar- 
dener. Now I grieve over the imperfect 
nature of the snail's nervous system that 
makes even death apparently painless. 

*' But he keeps up with the times, does 

the snail ; he reads the seed catalogues, 

and he knows that Asters cost more than 

Marigolds ; he has an eye for beauty, too ; 

i88 



The Rose-Chafer 



he knows a foliage plant very early in its 
career, and his taste is always for red 
rather than green. 

" The snail is a much underrated power ; rhe snaUan 

1 . t , • ■ . t . .• • -underrated 

his calmness, his persistence, his retiring poTuer. 
nature, his thick-skinned endurance, make 
him a type that is bound to survive, and I 
predict for him a glorious future. If he 
can only find enough fools to cultivate 
gardens for his use he will enter in and 
possess the land, and develop into some- 
thing quite grand." All of which quota- 
tion, with slight variation, will answer for 
our winged pest. 

I was quite touched by the prediction rhe future 
of a member of the horticultural society ^^ew^jersey. 
of that State, that apparently the whole of 
southern New Jersey will have to be aban- 
doned to the rose-bug. This adds a new 
terror to the already complicated legisla- 
tion of that unhappy region, for I am con- 
vinced, from my experience, that if the 
rose-bug wants anything he will get it, and 
no doubt we shall live to see him sitting 
in the gubernatorial chair. 
189 



XVI 
SUFFERINGS FROM DROUGHT 



In heat the landscape quivering lies ; 

The cattle pant beneath the tree ; 
Through parching air and purple skies, 

The earth looks up in vain for thee, 
For thee, for thee it looks in vain, 

O gentle, gentle summer rain ! 

W. C. Bennett. 




XVI 

'OR are the insects the only 
plagues which menace our cher- 
ished gardens, and our carefully 
planted wood-lots ; there are 
weather conditions that no vigilance can 
elude, which add tremendously to the dif- 
ficulties of the planter of flower or tree. 

On the south shore of Massachusetts Rainless 

, , weather ok 

Bay almost every summer sees a long the south 
period of rainless weather. The thunder- 
storms that gather portentously after hot 
days, are apt to drift away to the north, 
with only the tiniest sprinkling of our dusty 
roads and parched fields, to pour their 
wealth upon the crags of Swampscott and 
Lynn, Beverly and Marblehead. With 
jealous eyes we watch the rain descending 
upon our opposite neighbors of the North 
Shore, while we continue to dry up for 
want of it. 

This period of dry weather usually be- 
193 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

Anexcep- gius about the last of June and continues 
well into August, which is ordinarily wet 
and muggy, but the spring and summer of 
1 89 1 seemed disposed to defy precedent. 
April, which from time immemorial has 
been depended on for showers, this year 
completely spoiled its record, and only 
gave us an inch and a fraction of rain. 
This was followed by a dry, cold May, and 
then came the first half of June without 
a drop, culminating in two days the like of 
which we seldom see, the mercury touch- 
ing ninety -seven degrees in the shade. 
Then, at last, down came the floods with 
a rush, and refreshed the parched and 
thirsty earth for days, the first continued 
rain-storm for three months, sorely needed 
by the suffering hay-crop and the dwin- 
dling trees. 

During drought in this region, where the 
soil is light and sandy, the care of lawns 
and gardens has to be incessant. Fortu- 
nately our old town has a fine supply of 
aqueduct water brought from a nearly 
inexhaustible pond within its limits, and 
the hose can be brought to bear with 
effect upon the worst places ; but this, 
194 



Sufferings from Drought 



like other restoratives, must be used with Necessity 
moderation. Too much water cakes the i^. 
soil and draws the roots to the surface, so 
that, once begun, it must be continued or 
the plants die. It is better, we find, to 
water heavily two or three times a week 
than to keep up a continued sprinkling. 
If the water plays upon trees and shrubs 
during hot sunshine, the leaves are apt to 
scorch and shrivel, and the same is true 
of vegetables, which are well known to 
resent being watered on a hot day. 

At Overlea the garden, which lies low 
along the edges of the meadow, can get 
along very fairly without watering. Even 
this year the strawberry crop, which is 
very sensitive to a lack of moisture, did 
not suffer from the dry weather, possibly 
owing to heavy mulching with straw while 
the ground was moist from showers. The 
worst of droughts in June is never so bad 
as the same dryness in July, for plants, 
which are then in fullest vigor, can better 
bear the strain upon their constitutions at 
that time ; it gives them a set-back, how- 
ever, which prevents a vigorous growth. 
Grass is the greatest sufferer, and the first 
19s 



tke •weather. 



Tide Rescue of an Old Place 

hay-crop is often ruined by lack of rain, 
as was the case this year in our neighbor- 
hood. 
Omt Cataipa Upon the sandy knoll where our house 

suffers from , . ■' ^ 

cjumgesin ^ IS situated, and especially along the street, 
in places only accessible to a very long 
hose, the trees and turf suffered greatly,. 
and the sudden drop of fifty degrees of 
temperature, at the end of the period of 
drought, had a most disastrous effect upon 
the leaves, which shriveled and curled and 
turned red, and dropped off in many in- 
stances. A vigorous young Catalpa on 
our lawn, which, after the cautious man- 
ner of its kind, only ventured to put on its 
spring gown after the first of June, and 
then undertook to blossom freely, was so 
distressed by the changes of the weather, 
that after the storm we found at least two 
bushels of leaves strewing the ground be- 
neath it, and many others in such a con- 
dition that the lightest touch would detach 
them. Enough remained, however, to pro- 
tect the blossoms, which are wonderful 
productions for a tree to bear. If each 
one grew in a garden on a single slender 
stem one would value it for its exquisite 
196 



Sufferings from Drought 



painted beauty, and delicate perfume ; 
and to find a great spike of them deco- 
rating a burly tree is a constant source of 
astonishment at the prodigality of Nature. 
It is like the appearance of a fine gentle- 
man of the last century in a ruffled shirt 
and diamond shoe - buckles, among the 
more plainly coated Jin de siede beaux of 
our own day. 

I have a great admiration for a Catalpa ; The parrot 

• , 1 • • 1 1 • -i • and the Ca- 

its huge Vivid green leaves give it a semi- taipa. 
tropical air, and its sensitiveness to cold 
and storm shows that it comes naturally 
from a warmer clime than ours. I try to 
console it for its exile by lending it in sum- 
mer-time our Amazon parrot for a com- 
panion, and there is no prettier sight than 
the vision of this lovely green bird, of ex- 
actly the shades of the sunlight and shadow 
on the Catalpa leaves, pluming himself un- 
tethered upon the inner branches, only 
caged by the dome of the great boughs 
with their verdant canopy. When the 
leaves are in their prime he is perfectly 
concealed from view by his color, even 
when he takes a fancy to perch upon an 
outer bough ; and there he mocks and 
197 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

jeers at the passers-by with songs and 
laughter and merry cries, till you would 
think a whole primary school was let loose 
upon the lawn and all the pupils calling 
each other by name, or else that this was 
a lunatic asylum. 
Drought OM To return to the line of trees that bor- 
vere' " dcr the street. We find that it is not safe 
to leave them without a heavy top-dressing 
to act as mulch, and this application hav- 
ing been delayed this year by press of 
business, we found one good-sized Elm, 
that we imagined to be settled for life, 
dropping its leaves and turning brown in 
a most unbecoming manner, while the 
smaller and more recently planted trees 
were also showing signs of distress. A 
good dousing and dressing brought them 
all to, however, and when the mowing of 
the swale after the rain allowed us to 
make the rounds of the plantation, we 
discovered that the only serious sufferers 
were our newly set Pines, which are bring- 
ing the hill into disrepute by their brown 
and sear condition. This eminence natu- 
rally suffers severely from drought and hot 
weather; the little Oaks and Chestnuts 
198 



Sufferings frotn Drought 



burn up, and the Pines wilt distressingly, 
but they are so numerous that there is 
nothing to be done for them but to await 
the survival of the fittest. An Oak once 
rooted is rooted forever, but it is a ques- 
tion of time as to when it can maintain 
its top, and ours have burned off year 
after year, until now they seem to have 
gained vigor enough to hang on in spite 
of fate. 

Among the searching questions that are 
put to the members of the Society of 
Friends, in their meetings for the investi- 
gation of personal character, one of the 
queries is, " Has any Friend entered into 
business beyond his ability to manage ? " 

This question we are obliged to answer a melan- 
in the affirmative when we take time to ^si°Jo/un-^ 
ask it of ourselves, for, having outlined 
work enough for a dozen men, it becomes 
a puzzle how to carry it on with only the 
aid of one factotum ; extra hands being 
very hard to obtain in this village during 
the summer months. Much that we do 
is accordingly a makeshift. I am sadly 
obliged to confess to the existence of 
weeds where no weeds should be, of neg- 
199 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

lected spaces, of trees on the hill smoth- 
ered by grass, of rose-bugs unslain, and 
caterpillars left at large ; of a struggle for 
general effect, rather than a realization of 
neatness in detail, all of which is most 
reprehensible and melancholy. We look 
at our neighbors' neat gardens with re- 
morse and envy, and can only console 
ourselves by reflecting that when they are 
gone the weeds will have their way, but 
that in our struggle with nature in the end 
the trees will win, and trample the weeds 
under their mighty feet, and rear their 
stately heads proudly, while the beets and 
carrots of a future generation are still 
struggling with their yearly foes. 
The weeds' In a Tccent visit to the shores of the 
m^m^rtd. Merrimac, I have seen hills carpeted with 
the fallen leaves of haughty Pines that 
have numbered some centuries of growth, 
and I can smile at the flaunting Daisies 
of the hill, which overtop our baby ever- 
greens, and threaten to exterminate them. 
Your days are numbered, O weeds ! Wave 
now and dance in the sunshine while you 
may, for the first nails are being driven in 
your coffins. Little you reck that the 



Sufferings from Drought 



small brown spines, that disappear at your a rising: 
roots, are the first drops of a rising tide 
that is to bury your bright blossoms, and 
strangle your weedy growth. For a few 
years to come you may preen yourselves 
upon the hillside, but the tiny seedlings 
below are rising higher and higher, wider 
spread their green arms, thicker falls the 
brown shower, which at first nourishes 
your gaudy uselessness, but at last shall 
arise and overwhelm it forever. The gay 
and trivial have their little day of sunshine 
and triumph, but the strong roots of seri- 
ous vigor endure when the sunlight fails, 
and the winter winds blow. Everything in 
the lower is typical of the higher life, and 
the ephemeral for a time seems brighter 
and stronger than the eternal ; but not 
forever. Though speed may tell in a 
short race, it is bottom that wins the long 
ones, and it is the patient who inherit the 
earth. 

This is the great lesson of the forest, the The lesson 
philosophy it plants in him who nourishes " " ' 

it and awaits its growth. In the faint rus- 
tle of the tiny leaflets I hear the murmur, 
" Wait ! " and as I wander under the 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

ivait! shade of trees a hundred years old, I hear 
the echo far above me of that tender cry, 
in a solemn whisper : " Wait ! They, too, 
shall be as we are, giants in their day. 
What matters it that thy little life will be 
long over ? for thee the weeds and battle, 
for others the shade and rest. Plant 
thou ! that is thy mission, and the joy of 
him who reaps the fruit of thy labors shall 
be no greater than thine. Knowest thou 
not, O thou of little faith, that to look 
forward is the best of joys .'' Thy reward 
is renewed to thee daily in thy hope. 
Learn patience, and content thy soul." 

Counsel of And SO the young trees and the old 
alike, give counsel to him who can under- 
stand their language, whether he bends to 
listen to the soft voice at his feet, or lifts 
his head to catch the diapason of the over- 
arching forest ; encouraged by the lesson, 
we take up our burden anew — in our 
case the burden of a watering-pot — and 
do battle with the drought with a braver 
heart and sturdier resolution. 



XVII 
THE BLESSING OF THE RAIN 



The garden trees are busy with the shower 
That fell ere sunset ; now methinks they talk, 

Lowly and sweetly as befits the hour, 
One to another down the grassy walk. 

Hark ! the laburnum from his opening flower 
This cheery creeper greets in whisper light, 
While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night. 

Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore. 

What shall I deem their converse ? Would they 
hail 

The wild gray light that fronts yon massive cloud, 
Or the half bow rising like pillared fire ? 
Or are they sighing faintly for desire 

That with May dawn their leaves may be o'er- 
flowed, 

And dews about their feet may never fail ? 

Arthur Hallam. 




XVII 



EFRESHING, indeed, are the Pianttrees 

. , , , , to make 

long storms that succeed these rainy weatk- 

bi 1 • i • • ^ er endura- 

urnmgdays ; and it is a joy to Me. 



see the thirsty grass and plants 
drinking in life with every drop. I am 
convinced that the true way to render 
yourself indifferent to inclement weather 
in the country is to plant trees. No rain 
can ever hurt them, and, when they are 
freshly set out, each shower is a satisfac- 
tion to their owner, for it seems as if they 
could be seen to grow under its kindly in- 
fluence, and thus a day or week of hard 
rain, instead of a weariness, becomes a 
positive delight. I am not sure that this 
would bring compensation to the young 
for having to forego their active pleasures, 
but the more I become interested in gar- 
dening the more I am convinced that it is 
the appropriate pleasure for middle life 
and old age. 

205 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

Gardening Youth hatcs to Wait for anything, and 
'ofmautrr wislics to realize its dreams so soon as 
^^■^'^ they are conceived ; but as we advance in 

years we take a sober satisfaction in wait- 
ing a little for our pleasures, and also we 
like something that can recur, and that is 
interminable. Most other delights once 
experienced are exhausted, but gardening 
grows by what it feeds on. It is the same, 
and yet never the same ; it can be forever 
renewed ; it can be indefinitely extended ; 
it is within the reach of all dwellers in (he 
country, where home amusements are most 
needed. It can be compassed by the 
slenderest purse, and it will give a man a 
chance to spend a fortune if he so desire. 
It has its agreeable economies, and its fas- 
cinating extravagances. It can be made 
to satisfy the most orderly dispositions, 
and also return beauty and grace from 
careless and wild arrangements. It can 
be utilitarian and lucrative, it can be 
merely aesthetic and ornamental, or all 
four, just as the fancy takes you. In fact 
it may be briefly characterized as happi- 
ness for the million, with no patent on it. 
Added to all these charms is its whole- 
206 



The Blessing of the Rain 



ness. 



someness, its absorbing character, and, its hanan- 
best of all, a certain humanness about the 
occupation that brings one into pleasant 
relations with all sorts of people, and af- 
fords one a topic of conversation and a 
meeting-ground, even where he is limited 
to the most unpromising companions. The 
village crone forgets her gossip when you 
ta'k to her about her Rose bushes, or her 
last new Geranium slip; the farmer waxes 
eloquent over the merits of a new potato, 
or a way of protecting melons, and you 
find yourself always interested and in- 
structed, instead of bored, since almost 
any one you meet in the country can tell 
you something you are glad to know; or 
else he is eager to learn what you are do- 
ing yourself, which is a sure way to afford 
you entertainment, since every man is 
happy when allowed to ride his own 
hobby. All of which has a connection 
with rain, however little obvious it may be, 
since the moral of my discourse is, that 
when one becomes not only resigned to 
rain but glad of it, he has taken a step 
toward true philosophy. 

A garden after a shower has always an 
207 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

Beauty of a cspecial charm ; everything is sweeter and 
^Ih^fr. '^ fresher, even in its often bedraggled con- 
dition. I have a passion for dabbling in 
water-coloring of this description, and can- 
not keep my hands from the weeds and 
flowers, when I venture forth to see how 
my favorites have borne the storm. It is 
a delight to put one's arms about a boun- 
cing peony, with its red cheeks all cold 
and dripping, and tie a string around it 
to keep its bright faces clean. The for- 
ward flowers kiss you as you struggle to 
encircle them ; the wet leaves box your 
ears, as if you were taking a liberty. It is 
some time before you can accomplish your 
purpose, and you arise from the encounter 
quite breathless and dripping, with the 
pink and white faces, huddled up together, 
all laughing at your condition. 

It is June, and the last of the Fleur-de-lis 
are quite broken down, their pearly petals 
draggled in mud and defaced by water. 
This delicate French beauty will put up 
with no plebeian touch, but withers and 
dies if brought in contact with the earth. 
The Roses stand up, after their bath, quite 
fresh and shining, but the buds, which are 
208 



The Blessing of the Rain 



so blighted by a heavy rain that they do 
not open afterward, remind me of the Aus- 
trian violinist in " A Week in a French 
Country House," who greatly admired an 
English beauty, but confided to a friend 
his reason for not offering to marry her : — 

" She vould vash me, and I should 
die." 

Many things are broken down and re- 
quire tying up. If the rain has continued 
for several days the chickweeds are ram- 
pant, and overrun everything. New plants 
that have been on the anxious seat during 
the dry weather have decided to stay, and 
are putting forth satisfactory leaves. 

The joyful Pear-trees shake their drops T/te cat-bird 
down upon you, the cat-bird sits on the 
grape trellis and inquires what you are do- 
ing there. It is a way he has. He lives 
in the Box arbor, and thinks he owns the 
earth, and that our strawberries are his. 
He scolds the cat, and defies the robin, 
and has such a trig, gentlemanly air about 
him, with his well-brushed dark coat, that 
one might christen him Sir Charles Gran- 
dison. He makes me a bow, and says 
civil things (or uncivil) in his own tongue, 
209 



converses. 



77:?^ Rescue of an Old Place 

which, unfortunately, I do not under- 
stand. 

" I thought you told me this parrot 
could talk ? " 

" So he can — ze parrot lankwich — 
you don't expect all ze lankwiches for ten 
tollar, do you ? " 

Thus our cat-bird, which costs us no- 
thing but strawberries, discourses in a jar- 
gon which we would fain comprehend, so 
as to answer him according to his deserts ; 
and sometimes of a Sunday morning he 
sings us a glorious tune. 
Apollo the When the rain comes, Apollo, the par- 
th^^rain. Tot, climbs to the top of the tree in which 
he is perched, and spreads all his bright 
feathers to catch the shower. Elongating 
his wings, he makes them meet over his 
brow in the very attitude of the cherubim, 
and then, turning a somersault, he hangs 
head downward, that the water may thor- 
oughly drench his plumage. With all his 
gold, and red, and green glittering with 
raindrops, he resembles some superb 
blossom quivering on a stem, and makes 
a beautiful spectacle of himself. When 
his bath is done he chatters and laughs 



The Blessing of the Rain 



with glee, and sings his merriest song, with 
some disregard of rhythm and tune, but 
none of harmony, till all the smaller birds 
begin to pipe in company. 

The dusty foliage emerges brilliantly New birth 
shmmg and fresh. Every shower seems ram. 
to bring a new spring, and the world never 
fails to be surprised at the renovation 
which succeeds the rain. There seem, in- 
deed, to be new heavens and a new earth. 
The drooping evergreens lift up their tas- 
seled heads and take courage ; to them 
it means life and new hope. The vines 
throw out their tendrils, and the Honey- 
suckle emits a keener perfume. The white 
Lilies that come to rejoice us just as the 
Roses are going, gleam in the twilight, tall 
and fair. Who falsely says that it is merely 
a license of the poets to mingle Roses and 
Lilies, since they do not blossom at the 
same time ? With us the Irises and the 
white Flower de Luce linger till after 
the Roses are in bloom, and then, before 
the queen is wholly out of sight, come The flower 
these stately princesses, her followers, like p"""""' 
train-bearers of high degree, all clad in 
white and gold, nearest the throne, if not 

211 



artists. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

rivals for the ' ighest place of all. Is it 
the thorns that make the Rose the royal 
flower, by rendering her difficult of ac- 
cess, and surrounding her with a body- 
guard of lances ? Who shall say ? There 
are moods in which her sumptuous beauty 
and heavy fragrance seem less regal than 
the haughty, willowy grace of her rival 
flower, and we hesitate to choose. 
Mistaken And not the flowers alone rejoice in the 

life-giving drops, but the " sweet smale 
grass," refreshed and strengthened, lifts 
its green blades like the spear-heads of a 
rising army. The dusty mantle that has 
veiled its gentle beauty falls from it, and 
the wonderful variation of its tints again 
delights the eye. Those artists who set 
our teeth on edge with verdigris and 
arsenic floods, to represent this dearest 
and homeliest garment of our mother 
-earth, seem to me never to have entered 
into and possessed its secret, — the secret 
of myriad shadows, of m^Tiad lights, each 
catching a reflection from its neighbor 
blade, the brown earth below, the azure 
sky above. No greenest green of foliage 
or meadow ever shocks the most sensitive 



The Blessing of the Rain 



vision, for Nature, truest of painters, never Nature is 
fails to break her colors with such subtle painter. ^"^ 
mixtures, that only the utmost training of 
eye and hand enables the artist to hint 
her secret upon canvas ; and he who, with 
a palette of crude pigments of raw pri- 
mary colors, seeks to render the shifting 
emerald of spring, the topaz of the new- 
mown field, or the gold of harvest, is as 
one who would catch the flash of the dia- 
mond, or the burning heart of the ruby, on 
the brush's point, and think to imprison it 
forever. 

There are some lines of Matthew Ar- 
nold that a wet garden always brings to 
mind, in which the poet has truly caught 
the spirit of the fragrant scene. None 
but a frequenter and true lover of gardens 
could, in a few words, have thus pictured 
the mingled dismay and hope with which 
one views his garden-plot after a rain has 
both distressed and refreshed it : — 

So, some tempestuous morn in early June, 
When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er, 

Before the roses and the longest day — 
When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor 

With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May, 
And Chestnut-flowers are strewn — 
213 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

The garden ^o have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, 
in the rain. From the wet field through the vext garden 

trees 
Come, with the volleying rain and tossing 
breeze ; 
The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I ! 

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ? 
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, 

Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, 
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, 

Sweet-william with his homely cottage smell, 
And stocks in fragrant blow ; 
Roses that down the alleys shine afar, 

And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, 

And groups under the dreaming garden trees. 
And the full moon, and the white evening star. 
214 



XVIII 
DISCO URA CEMENTS 



Even now the devastation is begun, 
And half the business of destruction done. 
Goldsmith. 

O rivers,. forests, hills, and plains ! 
Oft have ye heard my cantie strains ; 
But now, what else for me remains 
But tales of woe .'' 

Robert Burns. 




XVIII 

HERE are other things beside Gardening 

. . a snare. 

drought to depress the spirits 
of the planter, who has often 
reason to wonder why he en- 
tered upon his disheartening career. 

It was, I beUeve, Sir George Cornewall 
Lewis who' declared that life would be a 
very enjoyable thing were it not for its 
pleasures, which is convincing proof that 
he must at some time or other have inter- 
ested himself in gardening, since this pur- 
suit, which at first seems, of all others, the 
most gentle and enticing, leads the un- 
wary dilettante from woe to woe before it 
has done with him. 

As soon as our forest is tall enough to 
show above it, we are talking of erecting 
an arch at its most obvious point of en- 
trance, with the appropriate inscription, — 
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here ! 

our experience leading us to think that 
217 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

the only way to enjoy a prospective wil- 
derness is to find one's blessedness in 
being among the happy few who expect 
nothing, and therefore can never have any 
but agreeable surprises. This arch, which 
perhaps will more appropriately take the 
form of a lich-gate, is to be sculptured 
with high reliefs of the woodchuck and 
the field mouse, while the rose-bug and 
the wire-worm are to find a prominent 
place in the general decoration. This 
architectural step has been suggested by 
the appearance of a new enemy, which 
has destroyed the last vestige of our confi- 
dence in conifers, and is a new proof of 
that perversity in trees to which I have 
before reluctantly called attention. 
Trouble Early in July we noticed a tendency to 

"plZ'i/^ droop in the leaders of some of the Pines 
and Spruces, but concluded it might be 
the dry hot weather which had affected 
their uprightness. A week or two more 
passed, and the new tassels of the year's 
growth all began to turn yellow, and to 
hang down disconsolately. We then sup- 
posed that some one in passing might 
have given the tops of the little trees an 
218 



Discouragements 



unfriendly twitch, from which they were Trees in 
suffering ; but as the days went by and a 
stout little Norway Spruce near the house 
began to lose its topknot, and Episcopus 
himself showed a bad droop in his mitre, 
we thought it worth while to look into the 
matter more closely, so we chopped oif 
the head of one of the sufferers, and gave 
it a post-mortem examination. Dissec- 
tion revealed ravages, and the fatal secret 
was out. There was a worm at the core ! 

And not one worm, but many, — small, 
white, plump and persevering, indifferent 
to resin, and coolly tunneling their way 
down the inside of the stem toward the 
ground. Certain leaks on the outside, 
and port-holes of their own construction, 
showed the exact length to which they 
had gone, so that by cutting just where 
these signs disappeared, we had the satis- 
faction of ending the earthly career of the 
leading invader, by snipping his fat un- 
pleasant carcass neatly in two. 

We pursued our insidious foe from tree ^^ insidious 

foe. 

to tree with the shears, and beheaded him 

with great slaughter. But, alas ! it was 

only a realization of the old nursery sneer, 

219 



ceptions. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

about cutting off your nose to spite your 
face, for when we had decapitated the 
worm, we left a headless tree to serve as 
his monument, and, in some cases, the 
wretched little monster compelled the 
destruction of three years' slow growth. 
A fly of per- The parent of the worm, being a fly of 
ambition and taste, invariably picked out 
the biggest and showiest of the poor little 
struggling trees to lay her eggs in, so that 
after the day of judgment was over, and 
the ins(ect)urrection crushed, our pride 
was crushed with it, for the borer, not 
being, alack ! the baseless fabric of a vis- 
ion, left an awful wrack behind, both of 
our Pines and our vainglory. 

Small comfort do we find in the assur- 
ance that the Pines will be none the 
worse for topping, for, with a life and trees 
so short as ours, " a few years " are not 
to be lightly regarded, and the poor hill 
had precious little good looks to lose, and 
has been waiting for its beauty already 
quite long enough. Moreover, what assur- 
ance can we have that every summer will 
not bring with it fresh devastation ? It 
takes a year or two for insects to find you 
220 



Discouragements 



out ; but their first call is never their last. 
If the borers have intelligence of the exist- 
ence of Pines on " Doctor's Hill," they 
will come again as sure as the tax-col- 
lector, and new woes are in store for us 
from their visitations. 

Moved by that desire to find consola- jsrorway 

• 11 » .11 1 • 1 T spruces suf- 

tion m our neighbors ills, to which L,-3. fering from 
Rochefoucauld cynically alludes, we go 
about spying at the tops of other people's 
evergreens, and find that this is the borer's 
year. Driving, a few days since, in a 
neighboring village, I saw, with concern, 
a long row of tall Norway Spruces at least 
forty feet high, that inclose a public gar- 
den, all suffering from the attacks of our 
fell marauder. Luckily, their tops will 
hardly be missed, while ours — Wae 's 
me ! as Carlyle would moan. 

Now the question arises, Is there any 
prevention as well as cure for this inflic- 
tion ? Is there any application obnoxious 
to the borer's mamma that can be put 
where she would lay her eggs, and so 
induce her to move on 1 Has she any 
avowed distaste for whale-oil soap, or coal- 
tar, or kerosene emulsion, or any other un- 

221 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



Da7igerous 
moral tetid- 
etuies of 
gardefiing-. 



pleasant odor ? And if there is such a 
deterrent, where should it be applied — 
on the very top of the leader, or at the 
place where the new shoots start from the 
old year's growth ? 

When a person sets out to plant a tree 
or two he scarcely bargains for having the 
study of entomology thrown in, with a 
course of chemistry into the bargain, not 
to mention toxicology, and the trade of 
wholesale murder, until he might as well 
begin the career of gardener by serving 
an apprenticeship to the Czar of Russia. 
I am horrified by the bloodthirstiness de- 
veloped by this seemingly innocent diver- 
sion ; still, this but confirms the view of 
pleasures before quoted. Indeed I am not 
sure but there is an opening for an essay 
on the Dangerous Moral Tendencies of 
Gardening. The only objection to it is, 
that if the Legislature of Massachusetts 
got wind of such a thing it would pass 
a law which might prove inconvenient. 
There are advantages in having your 
morals legislated about by a paternal, not 
to say puritanically paternal, government, 
but there are drawbacks also — one does 



Discouragements 



not always wish to be virtuous by act of 
Parliament. Still, if the legislation can be 
brought to bear upon worms, we will not 
complain. 

An eminent Philadelphia physician, vis- 
iting Boston, was struck with an inscrip- 
tion in the Public Garden, " Dogs forbid- 
den to swim in this pond on Sunday," 
and remarked that he knew that education 
had been carried to an advanced stage in 
Massachusetts, but he had not learned be- 
fore that even the dogs had been taught 
to read ! How delighted we should be 
to learn that the gypsy moth has been 
warned off by the General Court. So far 
we of the South Shore have been left to 
cope, somewhat ineffectively, I admit, with 
our own insects, but if the famous moth 
finds us out we may expect the govern- 
ment myrmidons at its heels, and let us 
hope that they will carry the web-worms 
with them. But a commission ramping 
about the fields, even for so praiseworthy 
a purpose, has its terrors. 

Another discouragement comes in the Tiiesaw-jiy. 
worm which saws off the small branches 
of the Oaks, and leaves the ground strewn 
223 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

with twigs, as after a storm ; but that su- 
percilious insect disdains trees the size of 
ours, and he is still to be anticipated. 

Upon some of the dwarf evergreens 
we have discovered a white scale insect, 
something like a mealy-bug, which covers 
the trunks and branches with its white 
spots, but that seems to yield to the dis- 
suasive effects of soap and water, and 
disappears after a good scrubbing. 
A Brob- The Hemlocks are to be watched with 

vTsftTlfsl"'"' ^ ^6w anxiety, since the newspapers tell 
us of a worm that is destroying the foliage 
and killing the timber in Potter County, 
Pennsylvania. This creature infests the 
trees in great quantities, to the dismay of 
the lumbermen, who are unable to destroy 
them. It is hard enough to persuade a 
Hemlock to grow, any way, but if a beast 
is lying in wait to devour it, we may as 
well give up altogether. I am told that 
there is a book as big as the Bible, pub- 
lished by the Agricultural Department in 
Washington, about nothing in the world 
but the insects injurious to forest-trees, 
which seems enough to discourage the 
planters, even of a wood that can be cov- 
224 



Discouragements 



ered by a pocket-handkerchief, like our a giant 
own ; but, to crown all, we rashly took a 'p^g",is. 
Brobdingnagian in the tree-line to walk in 
our Lilliput one day — a Brobdingnagian 
to whom the largest Elm in Hingham is 
but a walking-stick — and, looking down 
upon our three-inch Oaks, he complained 
that there were not trees enough ! Lucus 
a non lucendo — fancy a forest with that de- 
ficiency ! Having, moreover, discovered 
that our favorite Beeches were Black 
Birches, he contrived to impress us with 
the fact that the best of our forest was 
the prospect, and that, when the trees 
were grown, we should not even have 
that ! That Brobdingnagian was a terror ! 
Luckily he had not much daylight to see 
the place in, or we should never have the 
courage to go on, for wherever we had a 
good-sized tree he advised that it should 
be cut down, and if there was a square 
inch of territory without a seedling he 
thought it would be a good plan to put in 
a handful ; and he even showed a disposi- 
tion to discredit our crack story about a 
yield of forty bushels in the palmy days 
of our great Pear-tree, Methusaleh, but 
225 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

that may have been because we tried to 
make him believe they were barrels. 
He takes ^o much for taking a Man-Mountain 

tribute. jj^j-Q Liiiiput. I would not have trusted 
that one alone upon the premises with a 
pair of scissors, for there is nothing less 
to be depended on than the cutting mania. 
Granted that one ultimately accepts the 
situation, the moment when your tree 
comes down is always one of anguish. It 
takes so long to grow, and is so easily de- 
stroyed. Our Brobdingnagian took his toll 
at last, for he pointed out the fact that the 
flourishing little Elm I have been cherish- 
ing to shade the seat in the Box-arbor 
from the noonday heat, was really injur- 
ing the Box and should come down, which 
it did forthwith, as a tribute to his supe- 
rior knowledge, — a nice tree, too, that it 
would take ten years and more to grow 
again. 
A vista in- Wc havc another disturbing visitor who 
sisudupon. -j^gjg^g \x^oxi a vista, which involves the 
sacrifice of a fine clump of Lilacs and 
Buckthorn, that shuts off a view of the 
northern part of the place. We are dis- 
posed to think that it would be an im- 
226 



Discouragements 



provement to get a glimpse of the great 
Elm-trunk and the green grass beyond ; 
but, suppose we do not like it when the 
bushes are down, what then ? 

Even given on his part the best artistic 
perception, does it follow that another 
man's views of what you ought to like 
always suit your own ? 

May it not perhaps be wiser to work Thecontra- 

, 1. 1 • 1 riness of hu- 

out your own problems m your own way ? man nature. 
Human nature is so constituted that it 
yearns for authority, and when it gets 
authority it chafes thereat, and each man 
cherishes his own unwisdom as dearer 
than the knowledge of another. Such con- 
trary beings are we that it is always what 
we have not that seems the greater bless- 
ing, and we seldom know when we are 
well off. The hardest state of mind to 
attain is content, and so little do we know 
the essence of happiness, that finding the 
contented man, we forthwith compassion- 
ate him for his lack of ambition, or gird at 
him for supineness, and pride ourselves 
upon our own divine unrest. 

Even thus do the educating influences 
of the garden lead us round to philoso- 
227 



trials. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

phy, and the vista through the bushes 
opens out a moral perspective. 
Solomon's It is Only by what we suffer that we 

learn what is worth while, and, judging by 
the amount of suffering our amateur gar- 
dening gives us, we ought in time to have 
the wisdom of Solomon, which, ranging 
from the Cedar of Lebanon to the Hyssop 
on the wall, must have given him a good 
deal to undergo. No wonder that he dis- 
covered that "all is vanity." Probably it 
was borne in upon him by finding a borer 
in his own pet Cedar, or a caterpillar crawl- 
ing over the remains of his last Hyssop. 

We, struggling along after that illustri- 
ous gardener of Israel, have at least mas- 
tered one lesson, the important one that 
Nature, the rudest of task - mistresses, 
takes pains early to impress upon her 
pupils, sternly reiterating, — 

I teach by killing, let the others learn 1 
228 



XIX 
A WATER GARDEN 



Little streams have flowers a many, 
Beautiful and fair as any ; 
Typha strong, and green bur-seed ; 
Willow-herb with cotton-seed ; 
Arrowhead with eye of jet, 
And the water violet. 
There the flowering-bush you meet, 
And the plumy meadow sweet. 
And in places deep and stilly. 
Marble-like, the water lily. 

Mary Howitt. 




XIX 

O loRg as our friends profit by rhe order 

^ . . ^ •' of planting. 

our mistakes, and gain the re- 
sult of our experience, we have 
a compensation for our failures ; 
but let me give this bit of advice to the 
would-be gardener : if one is unable to se- 
cure ample assistance, and is obliged to 
develop a place slowly, the order of plant- 
ing should be trees first, shrubs second, 
flowers last of all. 

Trees may be considered as the skele- 
ton, the framework upon which the whole 
scheme is constructed, giving it strong 
substantial outlines and decisive meaning. 
Shrubbery plays the part of muscles and 
flesh, covering the unsightly bare places, 
rounding out the form, supplying the essen- 
tial, and giving grace and symmetry to the 
inclosure ; while flowers may be regarded 
as the clothing with which the completed 
body is finally adorned. Naturally, one 
231 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

cannot resist sticking in a few flowers as 
he goes along, but their disposition is not 
final, and they take up a deal of time, and 
are, consequently, to be relegated to a 
subordinate place at first, and looked for- 
ward to as the occupation reserved for 
those future unemployed hours when the 
woody plants can be left to grow, and ful- 
fill their mission. 
We neglect Here, whcrc the watering during sum- 
our flowers. ^^^^ ^^^ frcqucnt digging about and top- 
dressing, to retain moisture, are absolutely 
essential to trees and shrubs, flowers that 
have to be weeded and tended are much 
neglected, and only those hardy perennials 
that will take care of themselves and defy 
weeds, have as yet any kind of a show. 
But we are always dreaming of a period 
when the ligneous plants can be let alone, 
and we can turn our attention seriously to 
the purely ornamental. 

In the mean time, such wild things as 
come up of their own accord, on the hill 
and in the meadow, are full of interest, 
particularly in early spring and in late 
August, when the stock of hardy garden- 
flowers runs comparatively low. 
232 



A Water Garden 



At the latter period the little spot that Frogs in the 
I call my water garden is really quite a X/'^^'"^" 
sight for such a humble affair, a mere 
mud-hole as it were, formed by a spring 
at the foot of the hill, which makes a tiny 
frog-pond, about ten feet or less in diame- 
ter. The frogs themselves are quite orna- 
mental, wearing, as they do, the most gor- 
geous yellow and green coats, and being 
quite sociable and friendly, ready to sit 
on a chip and croak when we pay them 
a visit, and making music for us in the 
spring before the birds are fairly abroad. 
The old bull-frog, with a hoarse cold, is 
not always a comfort, for he has a way of 
coughing at night, like an asthmatic old 
gentleman, that is sometimes distressing, 
if you lie awake to listen, for it makes you 
sure his family must be anxious about him ; 
but the piping little ones have quite a 
cheerful note, which blends agreeably with 
the chirpings of the grasshoppers. 

On the marshy banks of the little pool, 
which cannot comfortably be reached with- 
out overshoes, some slim Willows are 
bravely growing, which I fear will some 
day make it too shady for the flowers, but 
233 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

at present they serve to give the spot a 
cosy and protected air, and the sunlight 
shifts through the light foliage, and falls 
kindly on the bright group of blossoms 
that make it so gay at the end of summer. 
Wild flow- The pool is close to an old gray fence, 

ersinthe , • , i -i i • i i j 

pool. over which the wild vines clamber, and 

against which the Milkwort, with its stiff 
stems and smooth leaves, stands up erect, 
its panicled pink blossom a-top ; not a 
very choice plant, but a sturdy one, and 
the vivid color " carries " well against the 
green, and composes agreeably with the 
masses of Arrowheads that are at this 
season full of blossoms and tall-stemmed 
sharp leaves, like a group of Amazons 
with their shafts drawn to the ear. 

At the edge of the pool a mass of 
sedges has been left unmown, and here 
are clumps of the creamy blossoms of 
the wild Foxglove, mixed with all sorts of 
Goldenrod, and some budding Asters, 
while the flowers of the Grasses are them- 
selves beautiful and various in their own 
quiet way, some with plumes and some 
with spears, as if ready to oppose the Ar- 
rowheads. 

234 



A Water Garden 



The wild Caraway and the Yarrow 
show white among the grass, and there is 
a wonderful rosy hue in the tall spikes of 
Dock that are blooming near by. The 
Forget-me-nots are still full of blue blos- 
soms, and spread out into the water far 
and wide, the earliest to come and the 
last to go of all the simple ornaments of 
the water garden. 

But the glory of the pool is the Cardi- Water-uiy 

■\ n r • \ 11 1 i-iTr bulbs afail- 

nal-ilower, of rich dark red, which litts ure. 
its bracted racemes proudly, and with the 
dignity of a true hierarch. This shows to 
advantage for the first time this year, hav- 
ing before fallen a victim to the careless 
scythe, so that its blossoms, which it per- 
sisted in putting forth in spite of discour- 
agements, were only a few inches high. 
But this summer no mower was allowed 
to come within six feet of the spot, and 
we are well rewarded by the glow and 
stateliness of this superb flower, which 
would be an ornament to the proudest 
parterre. The Water-lily bulbs that we 
got from a nursery in the spring have 
proved a failure, whether because they 
were planted too deep in the mud or be- 
235 



./^- 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

cause the bulbs were defective, it is im- 
possible to say. It may be that the spring 
is too cold for them, and that they require 
the warmer water of a pond ; but they 
should not be difficult to raise, for I saw 
a pink Water-lily blossoming this summer 
A rocky in a rocky pool, with nothing to grow in 
but the ball of rich mud in which it had 
been tightly packed before being gently 
laid in its stony bed. The picturesque 
pool is a feature of a small terraced gar- 
den, built out from the rocky side of a 
steep hill that descends abruptly to the 
seashore of Massachusetts Bay. The ter- 
race is approached from the level on 
which the house above it is built, by a 
rough stone stairway, that has for a balus- 
trade a huge granite boulder, overgrown 
with Ivy, and surmounted with trees. 
Great rocks inclose the terrace on three 
sides, and down the almost perpendicular 
face of one of them trickles the thread-like 
stream that falls into the pool below. The 
overflow wanders away in a small grassy 
channel, along the edge of which tiny 
water-plants grow, and Cardinal -flowers 
blossom. In the basin a pink Water-lily 
236 



A Water Garden 



race. 



is blooming, dainty dweller in a fairy home, 
and somewhere in the shadows a goldfish 
has a lurking - place. On the stone curb 
a blue jug, and a Japanese drinking-vessel 
formed of a shell, with a handle of bam- 
boo, give the requisite touch of human 
needs and uses to this lonely dell. 

The little green-turfed terrace is encir- a tiny ter- 
cled with flowers that thrive in this warm 
nook, where the morning sun shines hotly, 
and where its southwestern rays are tem- 
pered by the shade of great forest-trees. 
So steep is the hill that the shining waters 
of the ocean are seen through the topmost 
branches of tall Oaks and Hornbeams 
and Pines, while others stand far below. 
The brown seedy spike of a Dock-plant 
hangs out against the lichened crag, and 
forms a spot of rich color amid the pre- 
vailing gray, while all about, from crevices 
in the rocks, and from shady recesses be- 
neath them, spring Ferns and Grasses, 
with wild flowers and picturesque weeds. 
Some young Sassafras - trees, or rather 
bushes, near by, which have sprung up 
of their own accord, have a particularly 
pleasing effect with their yellow -green 
237 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

A piciur- Icavcs, and down the face of the rock 
esquevuie. gjj.a,ggles a Blackbcrry-vine, as perfect in 
outline and graceful in sweep as if it had 
been drawn by the hand of a Japanese ar- 
tist, each cluster of finely serrated leaves 
having a distinct value against the mottled 
stony background, which also gives a fine 
relief to the groups of flowers and ferns 
that cluster at the base of the pool. 

In such a situation nothing showy 
should find place, but only those things 
which might naturally grow around a for- 
est-spring. The little Cresses along the 
brook, the tender Forget-me-nots, the fine 
small Grasses, the water-weeds and ruby 
Lobelia, that have been wisely set here to 
enjoy the moisture, add to the wildwood 
charm of the pool with its tinkling water. 
A Japanese Tastc has gonc hand in hand with na- 
picture. ^^j.g ^^^ produced a lovely picture, deli- 
cate in detail, fine in color and grouping, 
harmonious in general composition. Mi- 
nute the space is, almost, as a Japanese 
garden, but the effect is dignified and po- 
etic. It is not mere prettiness that charms, 
but the true artistic feeling with which the 
idea has been conceived and executed. 
238 



A Water Garden 



The little scene touches and captivates, 
while gratifying all the senses with sound 
and sight and color, and soft touch of 
ocean breezes and of waving leaves. 

Another feature of the picture is a ^ second 
second semicircular terrace below, with 
Clematis-clad wall, to which one clambers 
by another flight of steps hewn in the 
rock to find more flowers, and more lovely 
weeds and grasses, and a second space of 
well mown turf, with a fine outlook on the 
tossing sea. From this a rugged path 
leads by devious ways to the beach below, 
where are boats and a yacht riding at an- 
chor, and the wide stretch of the great 
deep, with white sails upon the surface 
and whiter clouds overhead. These ter- 
races form a bit of artistic naturalness 
that would enchant even a critic from the 
Flowery Kingdom, and they were the re- Result of a 
suit of a charming woman's skillful plan- ^aslT.^^ ^ 
ning, and fine sense of the picturesque. 

But, returning to our own water garden, 
we find higher up the bank the Hawk- 
weed showing its yellow stars waving on 
slender stems, and the Prunella displaying 
its stiff blue clusters, while more Asters 
239 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

blossom, and tufts of Goldenrod cling to 
the hillside, and entice us to a climb 
among the Pines. 

Here we find that the dry summer has 
made havoc. Of thirty-five planted in 
April we shall barely save a dozen. This 
is discouraging, but we have gone bravely 
to work to set some more, and try whether 
August skies will be more propitious in 
the way of rain. We have also put in a 
few Savins, though we hear they take un- 
kindly to transplanting. 
Condition of The little Oaks and Maples have 

the trees on .■• • i , . • ^ ^i 

t/ieMi. thriven, and are showmg green agamst the 
already withering grass. The soil is yearly 
improving by letting it lie fallow, and the 
foot sinks into the soft cushion the uncut 
hay is making as a covering for the sand 
and gravel. If it were not for endanger- 
ing the seedlings, quite a crop could be 
harvested. It is not soil the hill lacks 
so much as rain ; but the long drought 
parches and distresses the plantation, and 
will do so till the trees can shade the 
ground and preserve its moisture. 

The small Chestnut group of which I 
boasted in the spring has made very little 
240 



A Water Garden 



progress, and hardly looks larger than it Ourchest- 
did last summer. Insects injured the 
early growth, and there was no later 
growth for lack of rain. But the trees 
are alive and healthy, so that we have 
something to be thankful for. Our one 
Mulberry-tree bore fruit plentifully, but 
failed to make much leaf-way. None of 
these trees were either top-dressed or wa- 
tered, or they would have done better. It 
is impossible for us to keep everything in 
high condition, so that we must content 
ourselves with the slow progress that na- 
ture affords when unassisted. It really 
seems as if sunshine and water are the 
prime essentials, and that feeding is not 
half so important as drinking. With this 
view, it is hard to understand why it would 
have upset the economy of nature to have 
a shower every night in summer, to re- 
fresh the fields and gardens of the world. 
Possibly in time, when the new system of 
producing rain has been brought down to 
a fine point, there will be twice a week in 
villages a pyrotechnic display, accompa- 
nied with explosions, that will transform 
241 



ne Rescue of an Old Place 

the year into a perpetual Fourth of July, 
to the delight of the infant mind. 
^^^"rannot Scriously speaking, should this new en- 
with nature tcrprise prove successful, what a revolu- 

■witk impu- . ^ . . 

nity. tion man is to produce in nature ! To 

trust such powers to his pygmy hand is 
dangerous, for the consequences of his 
personal gratification may be fatal to mil- 
lions. Fertilize the Desert of Sahara, and 
you cool off the south of Europe. Alter 
the temperature of Spain and Italy and 
southern France, and what is to become 
of the British Isles ? It may be that thus 
the future of the Dark Continent is to be 
fulfilled. Migrations southward may be- 
gin. Norway and Sweden, like Greenland, 
may be left principally to the inferior 
races, while new colonies spring up in 
lands now tenanted but by the wandering 
Bedouin or the swarthy Soudanese. 

Given new conditions, results are incal- 
culable, and if the rain, as well as the 
lightning, is to be harnessed to the Char- 
iot of Man, who can tell what disaster 
shall await the Phaeton who dares to 
drive such mighty and resistless steeds .'' 
Shall he too be hurled to ruin as a punish- 
242 



A Water Garden 



ment for his overtopping ambition ? or shaiiman 
will he prove master and lord even of the ^ekments ? 
elemental forces from whence he came ? 
What is most sure is, that before they 
yield themselves wholly to his bidding he 
must suffer the consequences of his rash- 
ness, and win his way to control only by 
ghastly sacrifice of human life. 
243 



XX 

LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods 
And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world 
Of eye and ear, both what they half create 
And what perceive. 

Wordsworth. 



XX 




ROM unrelated detail upon a AmJea 
place, we are gradually led iu^oTl 
towards broader effects, and 
a desire for more simple rela- 
tions of parts to the whole, while a wish 
to bring subordination to some central 
idea that shall give purpose to the pic- 
ture is gradually born in our minds. Thus 
our work becomes an education in the 
higher principles which must underlie all 
beauty. 

When we first purchased this old farm a quiet vU- 

. , , , . , lage home. 

no dream of landscape gardenmg crossed 
our minds. It was not to found a coun- 
try-seat that we bought it, but simply to 
get a place to live in, a quiet village home, 
as indeed it is, where a lovely view would 
gladden our eyes, where we should have 
elbow-room, with enough land to cultivate 
to provide us with an interest, and where 
we could raise hay for our horses, and, 
247 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

perhaps, a few vegetables for ourselves. 
A tree or two to shade us, and some 
Pines on the hillside to relieve its dreari- 
ness, were in our programme, as well as 
the Willows along the street ; but we felt 
that we had twice as much land as we 
needed, and should probably part with a 
lot on each side of us before very long, 
instead of wishing, as we now do, for a few 
acres more. 

As in everything else that one begins 
in an amateurish way, we looked no fur- 
ther along the road we are to travel than 
the end of its first enticing curve, and lit- 
tle we recked where it was to lead us. 
To get rid of barrenness was our obvious 
business, but there was no method in our 
endeavor beyond the mere putting in of 
all the trees and shrubs we could muster 
from the resources of the place, or through 
the kindness of our friends. 
Mistakes in For the first two years it required our 
*oftreeZ "'^ bcst energies to make these live, and there 
was not much thought beyond digging 
around them, watering them when dry, and 
pruning them into shape. But the third 
summer, when the bare poles began to 
248 



Landscape Gardening 



have perceptible tops on them, and the 
little shrubs to occupy a substantial space 
of the earth's surface, we began to be con- 
scious of defects of arrangement, of a lack 
of meaning and purpose in the picture, 
and to feel the necessity of a more artistic 
disposition of our forces. The needs of Needs of the 
the place, too, became apparent, The''*"'^^' 
trees that had been planted for shade 
either showed that they would throw no 
shadows at all within the next ten years, 
at the proper hours, or else would throw 
them where they were not particularly 
needed. The shrubs in groups looked 
crowded, the single ones gave a spotty 
appearance to the lawn that was not to be 
borne, the driveways were too wide and 
their curves unsatisfactory, while the ex- 
panses of turf were too brief for beauty. 

Each effort at improvement seemed but 
to make us the more conscious of our 
lacks, and while our neighbors were com- 
plimenting us upon the improved appear- 
ance of the farm, which no longer looked 
like an abandoned sand-hill, we ourselves 
were taking counsel together, and coming 
to the conclusion that the place was a 
249 



Tl?e Rescue of an Old Place 



schoolmaster to bring us unto knowledge, 
by the painful road of ignorance and 
failure. 
// is a hope- The convlction that you know nothing 

Jul sign to , 

be co7ivinced is always a hopeful, if a depressing sign. 

know no- When the painter feels that his finished 
""^' picture is a wretched daub, when the 

writer knows that his last romance is but 
a thing of shreds and patches, it is a 
proof that he is still growing, that he has 
a stronger note to strike, and that his end 
is not yet. 

One of our leading novelists says that 
his stories are to him like those tapestries 
wrought by the workman from behind, of 
which the weaver sees only the wrong side, 
the knots and ends of the worsted, the 
seams of the foundation, so that when the 
public views his finished work with de- 
light, recognizing its sincerity and dra- 
matic truth, the satisfaction of his readers 
is to him a wonder, since from his own 
point of view he knows not whether he 
has wrought well or ill. 

All great successes, I fancy, must be 
surprises to the men who make them, for 
the discontent of the artist with his paint- 
250 



Successes 
are sur- 
prises. 



Landscape Gardening 



ing, of the poet with his verse, of the Thepoet 
playwright with his play, is a penalty ex- ^pLinter 
acted by the ideal for which men strive, "'■^^^• 
and which all the more surely eludes the 
greatest, whose imagination is the most 
far-reaching. When a man is satisfied 
with what he has done he has reached his 
limit ; from that point he goes down-hill, 
imperceptibly it may be at first, but none 
the less surely. 

Our own discontent with our landscape- 
gardening convinces me that we have a 
future before us for a good while to come. 
Our picture will bear a lot of working on 
for many years yet, and in the mean time 
we have room for a succession of despairs, 
which will serve to keep us properly 
humble. 

But that we have on the north of our a landscape 
house a landscape to evolve that is a true *'^^^'' 
picture, no one can deny who looks out 
upon the ever-changing meadow from the 
bowery veranda from which we view it 
with never-failing joy. Not a far-reaching 
view, but such a one as Englishmen like 
to paint, a distant hill, a few clustering 
cottages, a level stretch of meadow with a 
251 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

A present Winding Stream ; some Willows near at 
*"" ' '' hand. So far, so good ; but the fore- 
ground is the puzzle. It is a muddle at 
present, being a sacrifice to the utilities, 
and is more or less disfigured with fruit- 
trees and vegetables, and piles of sand 
that have been dumped upon the marsh. 
A good deal veiled it is, fortunately, by 
the bending boughs of Pear and Apple 
trees laden with fruit, which is their plea 
for life, and when one is seated the balus- 
trade of the veranda is an efficient screen, 
so that one can freely enjoy the pleasing 
prospect. 

The French talk of the St. Martin des 
femmes, which comes to them after the 
beaute du diable has long gone by ; and our 
meadow, too, has its fleeting glory of 
youth in early spring, with Apple-bloom 
flush, and delicious verdancy to match, 
and then, after a commonplace summer 
of good looks, it comes to its Martinmas, 
and burns, and glows, and smiles, with a 
richness and warmth that are the precursor 

of the 

Hectic of the dying year. 

In this mature beauty, which is far more 
252 



Landscape Gardening 



permanent than the more exquisite spring Autumn 
loveliness, there is a great charm. The meadow. 
monotony of July greens has yielded to 
the deeper tones of the woodland in Au- 
gust. The declining sun casts longer 
shadows in the afternoon. The grass 
along the winding stream, now at its low- 
est, stands up high from the surface of 
the water, with darkly shaded edges the 
more apparent that its prevailing tones are 
russet with bright golden lights, where the 
hay has not yet been cut. Here and there 
the broad expanse shows a hay-cart and a 
few moving figures, the one touch of life 
wanting at other seasons to the landscape. 
The rounded hay-cocks in the distance 
are lightly shaded on the side opposite 
the light. There are streaks of red-brown 
■where some of the grass is in blossom, and 
of vivid green where masses of sedges 
line the low banks of the tiny winding 
river, in which their reflections tone the 
blue through soft gradations to the deepest 
shadow. A solitary heron floats above 
the marsh, beating the air with slow 
strokes of his broad wings. In the even- 
ing sometimes the clanging of the wild 
253 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

A flight 0/ geese is heard, the first deep tone in the 
^" ^' knell of dying summer. Now and then 

a white flight of gulls comes up from the 
harbor searching for fish, pouncing down 
behind the grass after some luckless perch 
in the water. The shadows of the dis- 
tant Oaks are darkest blue, and some 
far-off Elms fleck the front of an orange- 
colored cottage and subdue it to harmony. 
The gray roofs and red chimneys of the 
distant houses and barns, half-buried in 
foliage, seem an essential of the picture, 
giving it that touch of humanness without 
which a landscape lacks its final charm. 
The veranda rail, with its drapery of Wood- 
bine, gives a strong accent that brings out 
the values of the middle distance, while 
the tops of two old Apple-trees, laden with 
fruit, make a pleasing curve in contrast to 
the level lines of the party-colored marsh, 
elsewhere broken by the ashy-green foli- 
age of some graceful Willows across the 
invisible road. 

So much, at least, our landscape gar- 
dening has accomplished ; the ugly line 
which killed our predecessor has been 
obliterated by our border-plantation, and, 
254 



Landscape Gardening 



to all intents and purposes, the great The mea- 
stretch of grassy meadow, with its winding park"""'' 
stream and its bounding masses of Oak 
and Maple woods, is our own park, for 
none of its owners get the good of it as 
we do. For us it glows with sunshine, or 
frowns with a passing cloud ; ours all this 
wealth of jasper and chrysoprase and tur- 
quoise ; as much ours as the silver sheen 
of the Willows which wave so softly gray 
against it, and rest the eye from the daz- 
zling tints in which the old marsh arrays 
herself for the mowers. But the problem 
that vexes our spirits is that unshaped 
foreground, and how it may be made to 
blend more completely with the meadow 
into one harmonious whole. If the great 
Apple-tree could but change places with a 
certain Elm, that is of no use in the land- 
scape where it stands, the matter would 
settle itself. Two more Apple-trees to cut 
down, and you have a composition. 

But a Seek-no-further, which bears sev- Gooda/>/>!es 

11 1 /. 1 1 ii J. tnust tiot be 

era! barrels of early apples that are very sacrificed. 
good eating, is not easily to be sacrificed, 
even to the demands of a landscape, to 
which it is also advantageous from its 
255 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

height and mass, that could not be re- 
produced by any tree planted in our day, 
unless, indeed, we had the purse of Miss 
Catherine Wolfe to spend thousands in 
moving giants. If it could be had for the 
asking, I think I should choose a low, 
wide-spreading Oak rather than a stately 
Elm, or possibly the view might be im- 
proved if we had no tree at all, but that 
effect we have from an upper window, 
which may have its balcony some day. 
A destrue- A wliirlwind swept up the valley on the 
twelfth of August, and very nearly settled 
the question for us by making a clean 
sweep, but, luckily, contented itself with 
two or three great boughs full of apples, 
which are left hanging now by a slip of 
bark, in hopes that they may get sap 
enough through this narrow channel to 
ripen, but it looks doubtful. 

The same storm made havoc in the 
garden with such tall Hollyhocks and 
Poppies as had carelessly been left untied, 
and then whisked a branch from off our 
great Elm, and split in two a large Swamp 
Maple on the other side of the street. A 
five-minute tornado it was, with pouring 
256 



Landscape Gardening 



flood that swept the main street of the 
village, and littered it with fallen trunks 
and limbs twisted off in its whirling flight. 
As brief, but more violent a gale I have 
seen in Maine, cutting a forest into wind- 
rows, as a mower would cut grass with his 
scythe. 

To make a landscape garden one must ^ landscape 

. I o garden re- 

live With it and study it, putting in a touch quires study. 
here and there, as the painter treats his 
canvas, now effacing a spot, again adding 
an accent, blending, harmonizing, even 
destroying, if need be, and beginning 
once more. Advice you may listen to, 
but be not over-hasty to accept sugges- 
tion. Weigh each idea well before you 
admit it, look at it from all sides, for it 
will always have more than one. It is you 
who will have to live with the picture, and 
it is your mind that should lend the indi- 
viduality that will make the scene your 
own. It is, after all, the personal touch 
that is worth while. 

A fair woman, who is a summer neigh- 
bor of ours, took me the other day through 
interesting grounds, which her own taste 
and care had brought into a wild and yet 
257 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



A view of 

Hingham 

Harbor 

from 

Cohasset. 



A n abiding 
memory. 



controlled beauty. Boulders draped with 
vines, and shrubberies of native growth, 
lined the long avenue that wound up a 
wooded and rocky hillside to a home 
which overlooks Massachusetts Bay. But 
the finest feature of the commanding pros- 
pect was a glimpse of the rounded hills 
and silver-shining water of Hingham Har- 
bor, toward which the eye was led over 
miles of treetops. Just in front was a 
lawn of perfect turf, golden-green in the 
low sunlight, and a little way oflf, against 
the blue dome of sky, stood up some heavy 
Cedars, their black masses of foliage giv- 
ing just the required force of accent to 
the foreground, throwing far away into 
the remotest distance the lovely outline 
of the Blue Hills of Milton. 

Such a picture one cannot forget. In- 
telligence and taste have added to it the 
last refining touch. Remoteness is here, 
and sylvan wildness, contrasted with the 
gentle charm of well-swept turf, and skill- 
fully subordinated groups of flowering 
shrubs and plants, that complete, but form 
no jarring note in the beautiful scene. To 
me it seemed perfection, but with the eye 
258 



Landscape Gardening 



of the true artist who loves his work, my 
hostess noted a ledge here, an obtrusive 
Oak-top there, which, to her fastidious 
taste, seemed to intrude. For the true 
lover of nature works forever at his pic- 
ture, ever sensitive to a new charm, watch- 
ful for a fresh effect, rejoicing in each 
change, painting with a palette of the Nature's 
great Mother's blending, on a canvas of ^"'''''^• 
her own contriving, with an impression- 
ism that cannot falsify, and a detail that 
is never intrusive. In this great school 
one learns breadth without vagueness, in- 
tensity without violence, and softness that 
cannot be effeminate. The value of at- 
mosphere, the glory of the sky, can never 
be out of key with the picture, and the 
" seeing eye," by careful study and patient 
waiting, can here evolve ideal beauty from 
material form. 

259 



XXI 

THE WANING YEAR AND ITS 
SUGGESTIONS 



Season of mists and mellow f ruitf ulness ! 
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun. 

Keats. 

Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her ; 't is her privilege 
Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
From joy to joy. 

Wordsworth. 




XXI 

ilUR season's labor draws to its 
close, and with it comes a pe- 
riod of rest and reflection, as 
we turn our thoughts back 
through this pleasant summer of work and 
hope. 

The charm of a long autumn is very Autumn 
great, but seldom permitted by our capri- 
cious climate, which is apt to spoil the 
garden in September, and then make the 
misfortune the more apparent by a suc- 
cession of mild October days, when flow- 
ers and green leaves would suit the soft 
warm weather. 

This year, which has made eccentric 
shifts of all the months in turn, giving 
us a dry April and a cold July, bestowed 
upon us a most enchanting autumn, mild 
and free from storms, so that vegetation 
remained perfect till late October, and the 
harvest-time was most propitious. 
263 



The Rescue of an Old Place 



A delayed 
frost. 



A utumn 
tints. 



No early frost blighted the cornfield, or 
marred the golden pumpkin's fairness. 
No rain made the apple and pear gather- 
ing a disappointment and a sorrow. Late 
flowers lined the garden - walks in un- 
chilled splendor until mid-October, while 
the soft September haze and the mellow 
glow of the suceeding month showed Ma- 
ples in full green leaf, and Oaks with 
only a touch of ripened crimson. 

When the autumn comes thus slowly to 
maturity, a tinge of russet and gold creeps 
softly into the landscape. Here and there 
is the accent of a red leaf or branch, like 
the note of a trumpet in an orchestra. Soft 
browns steal into the meadows, and form 
a shade on northern slopes. Dead are 
the Goldenrods and Asters, faded the 
roadside flowers. The Rose-hips make 
ruddy gleams in the bushes, and a few be- 
lated Barberries cling to their thorny stems 
in wizened splendor, while other berries, 
purple and black, cluster by the fences, 
and the nut-trees hang out their smooth 
or prickly burrs, promising a harvest of 
brown fruit. 

This is the green old age of the year, 
264 



The Waning Year and its Suggestions 
cheery and fruitful, bountiful and rich. Theoidage 

■' ' . of the year. 

Gone are the hurry of spring and the bur- 
den of summer, the slow harvest has been 
gathered, and repose has come to the 
teeming earth. Now must the gardener 
look forward and plan for the coming sea- 
son, and set his bulbs for spring blooming, 
and clear away the rubbish of dead stems 
from the flower-beds, and transplant pe- 
rennials that they may blossom freely the 
following summer. 

It is well in planting a garden to ar- 
range for this season, which is so pleasing, 
by having a profusion of hardy plants that 
are not easily disheartened by a chill, and 
make a brave show as the year wanes. 
This is a care often neglected by public 
gardeners, who stock their parterres with 
ephemeral blooms that the first cold 
breath destroys, leaving but a dreary 
group of dry sticks behind. 

Well mingled with these more delicate Late bios- 
plants should be those hardy perennials 
that lift their gallant little heads and smile 
in the very teeth of winter. The hardy 
Chrysanthemum, the Marigold, and Calen- 
dula are a delight in the late autumn, with 
265 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

their cheery tints. The Salvia, less hardy, 
is the glory of a September garden, and 
many another flower, with a little shelter 
at night, will make a walk gay and cheer- 
ful that would otherwise be gloomy with 
decay and desolation. The Japanese An- 
emone is a treasure at this season, and 
those bushes bearing ornamental fruit, 
which hangs on even amid the snows of 
winter, should never be omitted from a 
border. 
Comfort Like a happy temper in adversity is a 

^mver. glcam of color in the garden in the late 
autumn. One draws a lesson of good 
cheer from a Calendula, so undaunted and 
gay even when the snows are falling on its 
golden head. A cluster of red berries on 
a dry stem gives a distinct joy in early 
winter, and life is made brighter by the 
aspect of hardy blossoms and hardier fruit 
when all the trees around are stripped of 
foliage. 

In summer the charm of a garden is in 
its coolness and shade, in the dark shelter 
of thick trees and the quiet of a shaded 
arbor. In the autumn we seek the sun- 
shine and desire color and warmth, wish- 
266 



The Waning Year and its Suggestions 

ing to forget the coming cold and the 
swift fading of leaf and flower. 

It is like the natural clinging of man to ^'o^i^^ 

. . . 1 dreads death 

life which increases as years steal upon less tiian the 
him. Youth does not dread death as age " 
shrinks from it. The habit of living be- 
comes stronger as we descend the hill, 
and the suggestion of interruption seems 
impertinent. The late scentless flowers 
are more precious than the summer Roses, 
for their time will soon be gone. Nature 
cheats us with her autumn splendor, which 
beguiles the mind into forgetting that it is 
the precursor of decay. While we admire 
the glory of a Maple grove, we do not real- 
ize that the storms of winter are gathering 
behind the forest. When the mountains 
are purple in the low sunlight, we forget 
the snows that shall soon whiten their 
summits, and there is wisdom in this 
natural instinct that forbids foreboding 
when joy is at hand, which can enjoy the 
present without seeking to lift the curtain 
of the future. 

Let us rejoice, then, in the autumn flow- Rejoice in 
ers ; in the soft atmosphere that clothes Jfory. ""'" 
the world with beauty; in the great 
267 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

moon's yellow light ; in the round, soft 
clouds, and the wild scurry of the dun 
rack that scuds across the heavens when 
the breeze rises. Full soon will that 
searching wind scatter the jewel - like 
leaves, and tear the last petal from the 
shrinking flowers, while the grass grows 
brown and sear, and the soft earth stiffens, 
like a body from which life has departed. 
Too soon will the valiant head of the last 
Daisy be buried in a mantle of snow, and 
the leaden sky bend low above a frozen 
earth. Let us be glad then while we may, 
for the days shorten, and with them our 
summer joys, and the lives of the autumn 
flowers. 
A lesson But as the summer wanes, and we turn 

leartied. r . , • i 

once more from nature to our own minds 
for refreshment and solace, we begin to 
consider what the year's efforts have 
brought to us, and to reflect what is the 
serious lesson taught by all our labor, and 
to sum up our inward experiences, before 
we take that account of our material stock 
with which this simple record is to close. 
No experiment is really valuable which 
does not conduce to the mind's growth, 
268 



The Waning Year and its Suggestions 

and therefore amid these frolicsome rec- 
ords of disaster and enjoyment, I would 
wish to insert this one didactic chapter, 
which may easily be skipped by those who 
seek amusement only, in reading this little 
book, in which I can emphasize in a few 
words the effect of out-of-door interests 
upon the mind and moral nature of those 
who enjoy them. And I do this the more 
willingly because I believe that a taste for 
gardening is one of the elemental impulses 
of humanity. There are individuals with- 
out it, as there are people without sight or 
hearing or a sense of smell ; but, on the 
whole, to dig comes naturally to man, and 
at some time or other in the course of his 
existence the desire to own a portion of 
the earth's surface is apt to seize upon 
him, and demand satisfaction. 

This impulse is of maturity rather than ^ "^n of 

.... maturity. 

of youth, for gardening in its larger sense 
is a thoughtful pursuit, appealing to the 
broader qualities of the understanding. 
It is not merely the desire for healthful 
exercise which stirs a man, but also the 
wish to learn the secrets of our common 
mother, to force her hand, as it were, and 
269 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

compel her to reward his toil. The fable 
of the giant Antaeus, who renewed his 
strength when he came in contact with the 
earth, has a subtle meaning, for it is by 
this contact that many weary souls have 
found rest and arisen refreshed. 

To him who is tired of mankind the 
solitude and peace of a garden have a 
rare charm. Many a great statesman 
has turned from the cares of state to till 
his fields, or cultivate his flower-beds and 
trees, his alert brain finding full range 
for its activity in some scheme of land- 
scape, or some great project for fertiliz- 
ing a barren waste and rendering it pro- 
ductive. 
Food/or Gardening gratifies the thoughtful mind, 

''"'■^ ' because it does not look for immediate re- 
sults. It inculcates patience in all its 
teachings, — patience not only with pro- 
cesses, but with results, for disappoint- 
ments have often to be met ; the best of 
schemes fail of accomplishment, new ene- 
mies arise on every hand, visible and hid- 
den. To combat them requires perse- 
verance, fertility in resource, promptness 
in action. 

270 



The Waning Year and its Suggestions 

The gardener's life can never be purely 
contemplative. However fair his domain, 
he must perforce keep his eyes open in it, 
and his mind active. Vigilance must be 
his attribute, or he will have cause for re- 
gret. By watching he learns what to do, 
and what to leave undone, the habits 
of the plants he tends, their needs, their 
uses, the different phases of their beauty. 
Unconsciously he becomes educated, and 
his mind lays up new stores of facts and 
deductions for future use. 

The planter also grows in unselfish zeal umeiyish 

hi . . T T ioil helps ike 

IS plans increase m scope. He pre- character. 

pares for the future race, not alone for his 
own joy. The trees he disposes for an- 
other generation to sit under ; he plants 
timber for the heir to cut ; he adds to his 
broad acres that he may leave them to his 
children. For himself the toil, for others 
the fruit of his labors ; and thus, setting 
aside his own recompense, he comes into 
a larger manhood, into that fullness of life 
which only belongs to him who has for- 
gotten self, and lives for an end he cannot 
hope to see. 

From all this training should result en- 
271 



Tloe Rescue of an Old Place 

Moral train- durancc of Unavoidable evils, fortitude in 
^garden""' disappointment, serenity of mind. Thus 
the garden shows itself to be a school of 
the higher virtues, of patience, of tranquil- 
lity, of vigilance, of fortitude, of unselfish- 
ness and high serenity. 

More lessons than these it teaches, 
therefore small wonder that the groping 
soul of man, ever seeking higher things, 
turns to this simplest pursuit as a child to 
its mother, finding in her arms comfort 
for his unrest. Unconsciously he seeks 
this school, which is so great a help to his 
spirit, and thinks often it is the pure air 
and exercise alone that have given tone to 
his nerves, and fresh vigor to his under- 
standing. 
Its best effect But, after all, the best thing the garden 
does for man is to imbue him with a love 
of home, to anchor him to that one spot of 
the earth's surface which he calls his own, 
and to which he can impart some portion 
of his own individuality. The acres he 
has tilled, the garden-plot he has watered, 
will always be dear to him and to his chil- 
dren, and it is this desire for a home and 
an inheritance for those who shall come 
272 



on man. 



The Waning Year and its Suggestions 

after him, that drives him to the purchase 
of land and the beginning of agriculture. 

A man who owns a freehold in his The impor- 

. . tance of a 

country becomes of account at once ; it freehold. 
lifts him from the position of a transient 
into the dignity of a resident ; he gives 
hostages to fortune ; he becomes an es- 
tablished citizen, in place of a possible 
tramp, and is of more value in the com- 
munity forthwith. The effect upon him- 
self is elevating and composing. It stills 
his restlessness, allays ennui, turns the 
current of his mind into new channels, 
provides him with an amusement for his 
leisure hours, while giving occasion for 
healthful exertion, as well as stimulating 
wholesome thought. It is opposed to 
morbidness, it forbids subjectivity, it 
rouses the imagination, and gratifies the 
love of beauty. 

There is that fine largeness of quality 
in it as an amusement that appeals to the 
simplest minds, as well as to the most 
comprehensive. It is this which proves 
that it is elemental and human to love a 
garden, to enjoy the soil, to find comfort 
in watching the development of plants 
273 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

and trees, and joy in their blossom and 
fruitage. 
Needs of the In America we need just this to give us 

A merican. i i i t i i -i i -i 

Stay and balance. In the older world, 
where habits are more established, the 
taste is strong. Here it is overgrown by 
many things. In so great a land as ours 
one portion of the soil seems not enough 
for the citizen. He wants a ranch in 
Colorado, an Orange-grove in Florida, a 
seaside home on the coast of Maine, in 
addition to his city dwelling. But as the 
crowd increases, and the nation ages, more 
and more will men concentrate their ener- 
gies upon one spot, and the love of home 
and locality will grow more intense, as it 
is apt to do in the human being when 
years bring greater quiet to his spirit, and 
make rest his choicest blessing. 
Outcome of When we are at last sure that our chil- 
^garZns"/ drcn will be content to reap what we have 
sown, to repose under the trees that we 
have planted, solidity and peace will come 
to us, and life will grow more simple and 
more pleasurable to our people. Then 
will the garden be the true pleasure- 
ground, and its wise stillness will pervade 
274 



The Waning Year and its Suggestions 

the character of the men who find its cul- Needed 
ture a real education, and there learn the '""""'' 
needed lessons of perseverance, and pa- 
tient waiting for the good the future 
brings, — leading lives without hurry, full 
of calm interest in their surroundings, and 
with no wish for change. 

275 



XXII 
UTILITY VERSUS BEAUTY 



Happy art thou, whom God does bless 
With the full choice of thine own happiness ; 
And happier yet, because thou 'rt blest 
With prudence how to choose the best : 
In books and gardens thou hast placed aright 
(Things which thou well dost understand, 
And both dost make with thy laborious hand) 
Thy noble, innocent delight. 

Abraham Cowley. 

The trumpet of a prophecy ! O wind, 
If winter comes, can spring be far behind .' 

Shelley. 



fBF 



Mm 



XXII 



N spite of all the moral effects ^ trial ta 
of the garden upon the philoso- 



^^ ^i pher within us, I am constrained 
- — -' to confess that it has its trials 



for the average temper, and that in that 
development of patience for which it 
works, there is a good deal of stumbling 
by the way, during the battle between the 
useful and the ornamental ; for on any 
moderate-sized place, with only a man or 
two to do the necessary work, there is a 
constant conflict between what is of pres- 
ent importance, and what serves for future 
adornment. 

This is one reason why we like to have 
as many things done in the autumn as 
can safely be accomplished at that tirfie, 
because of all seasons of the year the 
spring is the one when everything comes 
at once, and your factotum is more than 
279 



scurry. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

ever distracted by the various calls upon 
his time and attention. 
The spring I used to wonder why farmers were 
always behindhand with their work, and, 
while apparently idle part of their time, 
were driven to death for about two thirds 
of the year ; but I have discovered that 
the weather is responsible for a good deal, 
first by being cold and perhaps wet in 
the spring, so that the ground cannot be 
tilled until late, and then suddenly sending 
everything ahead by a few unseasonable 
days of heat and sunshine. Then there 
is a scurry for the hitherto impracticable 
digging of the vegetable-garden, a head- 
long rush to get the seeds in ; the grass, 
which always interferes at unseasonable 
moments, demands the lawn-mower, and 
will not wait a minute. The shrubs that 
you have been waiting to move until the 
weather should be mild enough to permit 
your superintending the operation (one 
can cope with a piercing east wind for 
this purpose, but not with a northwest 
snowstorm) shake off their icicles, and 
all at once begin to leave out ; in a day 
or two it will be too late. If there is 
280 



utility versus Beauty 



a tree that you have intended to plant 
at this season the complications are in- 
creased, for setting a tree properly is a 
work of time, and delay here is danger- 
ous. 

The perennials need overhauling and 
replanting in the flower-garden ; the weeds 
are rushing ahead and choking every- 
thing ; you want your man to attend to 
them when he has to be putting in peas 
and potatoes for your future sustenance. 

The whole spring is one breathless Haying- 
moment, through which you are rushed ^ioo^Zn!''" 
helter-skelter, leaving half your needs un- 
attended to ; and while you are still en- 
deavoring to catch up with the work, all 
of a sudden our headlong summer bounces 
into haying time, and the hapless beautifier 
is worse off than ever. 

Of what account are trees and shrubs 
and flowers, or even the ever-clamoring 
lawn itself, when the fields are to be 
shorn, and possible thunderstorms lurk 
low along the horizon .-* This is the weeds' 
moment, and they avail themselves of 
it promptly. Up comes the Chickweed 
among the peas and corn ; the flower- 
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The Rescue of an Old Place 

garden fairly bristles with Plantains and 
Mallows, and the paths are slippery with 
Purslane. On the lawn the Dandelions 
begin to intrude, and go to seed when 
they are only an inch high, lying down 
deceitfully under the lawn-mower, and 
poking up their white plumes the minute 
it has passed in the most imperturbable 
manner. 

The harvest ^^ is of no use to summon any one. 

7v7rything. " ^^^^ §''^^5 must bc cut to-day," or " the 
hay must be turned, or forked over, or 
got in, or whatever " — there is no appeal ; 
harvest-claims take precedence, and the 
weeds nod their heads at each other, and 
say " Come along ! " and life is to them a 
beautiful holiday. 

By the time the last load of hay has 
been safely stowed away, these same weeds 
have to be coped with, for they have be- 
come a forest, and that still further post- 
pones the time when the aesthetic side of 
your place can really have any considera- 
tion given to it. At last, when you do get 
round to it, it is too late to do anything, 
and one can only sit down and make plans 
for another season, which will again be 
282 



utility versus Beauty 



buried out of sight, in the rush which is 
sure of a periodical return. 

For this reason August is a month Augusta 
which I delight in, for then there is a " '""" '" 
moment's breathing-space before the fruit 
harvest and the terrible " second crop " 
are again upon the carpet. It is a good 
time for grading and sodding before the 
autumn rains. With care, and a ball of 
earth, some of the hardy shrubs can be 
moved ; if it has been a dry summer, now 
is the chance to put in some evergreens 
and to remodel your beds of dwarfs. But 
no sooner do we get fairly to work, and 
the general effect begins to improve and 
ideas to take shape, than the marsh, 
which usually claims the whole late fall, 
and the months of March and April, puts 
in an appeal for drainage, and, presto ! 
the men who were engaged in ornamental 
work are whisked away, and you can only 
see the tops of their heads above the edge 
of a pile of dirt, as they burrow their way 
along an unsightly ditch. 

Then comes September with its pears pearsatire- 
and apples. Your own fruit is a fine thing 
to have in theory, beautiful to look for- 
283 



some care. 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

ward to, something to be proud of, but it 
is a tremendous burden when it comes. 
The gathering is an important labor, but 
taking care of it when it is gathered is in- 
finitely worse. The pears, especially, must 
be watched daily, turned and selected, 
and the refuse rejected, till their owner 
would be happier if he never saw a Bart- 
lett or a Jargonelle again. The early 
apples, welcome and useful as they are, 
demand the closest attention, and it is not 
until the last Russet is gathered, ar>d bar- 
reled, and stowed away in the cellar for 
winter use, that the amateur farmer can 
have an easy mind. 
Profit in a Perhaps it would be wiser to choose be- 

garden after , 

all. tween ornamental and useful management 

of a place to begin with, and content j^our- 
self with either a farm or a garden, as the 
case might be ; but in this event, though 
one would probably have better results to 
show, he would miss much of the fun of 
the more helter-skelter methods of land- 
scape-practice, as well as the profits of 
orderly market-gardening, which can never 
be very successful in the hands of ama- 
teurs. There is, however, a sense of profit 
284 



utility versus Beauty 



in your own garden as an accessory, what- 
ever statistics show, which is not to be fore- 
gone ; and, as to the pleasure of getting 
trees and shrubs in their proper places, 
who that has read these chapters can 
doubt that they are a source of amuse- 
ment and instruction alike, even to the 
most unpractical of their protectors ? 

The problems of the old place will con- TJie puzzle 
tinue to develop and add puzzle to puzzle «'%! 
in our uninstructed minds ; we may pay 
dear for our whistle, but we shall have 
the whistle anyhow. After a few more 
years of experiment and failure, or suc- 
cess, as the wheel turns, we shall proba- 
bly come to the conclusion to let the grass 
and shrubs grow as they will under the 
trees, and let the rest go, which will, I am 
disposed to think, be wholly to the advan- 
tage of the looker-on. But while some 
vestige of vigor is left to us, we shall think 
the puzzle part more interesting than the 
solution, and so struggle happily on, set- 
ting for ourselves ingenious examples, to 
be painfully worked out perhaps to a 
wrong result. Interest in the place will 
be less when we can no longer tinker at it 
285 



T})e Rescue of an Old Place 

to advantage, but to that excitement will 
possibly succeed the calm enjoyment of 
those who sit under the tree they have 
planted, and partake of the fruits of their 
own vine. 
The new As we look Up to-day to the trees, upon 

intothe old. wliosc tops we could look down three 
years ago, we begin to realize the profit of 
our labors, and to feel that we may even 
live to take pride in them. The birds which 
sing in their branches, and build their nests 
among the twigs, thank us sweetly for the 
shelter thus provided, though their harmo- 
nious chatter adds to the precariousness 
of a morning nap. The shrubs expand 
with vigor, the flowers we have planted 
flaunt gayly, the vines are climbing to the 
roof-tree. The spot not long ago so deso- 
late and unpromising is now sheltered and 
verdant. The dull red walls of the house 
have taken on a mantle of green, as it 
begins to nestle into the shadow of the 
upreaching branches, that will erelong 
overtop its chimneys. The raw freshness 
has largely disappeared, the new place is 
melting into the old, and in a few years 
more people will have forgotten, as they 
286 



utility versus Beauty 



so soon do, the former conditions, and 
will cease to realize the importance of the 
changes made. 

The beauty of stately expanses, of deep 
solitudes, of extensive lawns, and broad 
park-like spaces, we can never attain, but 
travelers on the village highway will look 
kindly through the overarching trees and 
say, " A pleasant home is there, and a fair 
outlook on a quiet scene." 

Already the Willows of the boundarv Siemmer de- 

•' . ■' parts. 

stretch up to hide us from the rear. The 
Pines are showing dark once more, against 
the hill sunbrowned by the September 
sun. Yellow leaves are shining on the 
Elms and Birches, and the shrill wind 
streaks the green grass with bright-hued 
foliage, torn from the Maple boughs. The 
gray-colored blossoms of autumn flowers 
gleam from the shrubberies, and the low- 
declining sun casts long shadows across 
the turf. Soon will a nipping frost bestrew 
the lawn with wrecks of summer glory ; 
the birds are gathering for their southern 
flight ; the year is past its prime. A few 
short weeks of hectic color, and then — 
the end, the sleep, the long dull silence of 
287 



The Rescue of an Old Place 

winter, the sheets of snow, the chains of 
ice, that bind the earth until her re-awak- 
ening. 

September How swift the silcnt succcssion of the 
months! September seems to tread upon 
the train of June, it is so quickly here, so 
quickly gone. The Goldenrod is the first 
plume of the year's hearse, yet when its 
earliest yellow feathers wave we burn un- 
der the hot breath of summer, but ere they 
lose all their gold, the hand of death is 
on the grass, and the brown leaves have 
fallen. 

Autumn A coM rain patters on the gravel walk, 

and the branches of the trees are dripping 
as they hang unstirred. The sky is gloomy 
and leaden, — one vast gray cloud sullenly 
enwraps the heavens. There is no hope, 
no outlook ; all is sad and drear, — rain 
over head, a wet earth under foot. Sum- 
mer has gone ; the chill of autumn is here. 
But hark ! what is that murmur ? It is the 
northwest wind blowing his distant horn, 
and in a twinkling the leaden skies are 
broken with windows of light. The gray 
scud whisks up toward the zenith, the 
wet trees shake off their burden, and wave 
288 



utility versus Beauty 



joyfully in the keen breeze. October October 
comes ! What though his tramp is over '^'"""■ 
the dead leaves ! He comes like a warrior 
from battle, fresh and strong, inspiriting 
and brave. " Be not cast down ! " he 
Cries, " by the death of fair summer. Bold 
winter succeeds to the throne. He is a 
king worth having, and his reign shall re- 
store your vigor, men of the north ! He 
helps to make you what you are ! Behind 
him, hidden by his furry mantle, lurks the 
spring, and then once more the dead sum- 
mer shall be reborn, and the world shall 
be again all blossom and music ! " 

So with this bracing note, October vau ! 
passes on, while, cheered by hope and 
softened by memory, we leave the old 
place to sleep awhile, and turn to our win- 
ter fire, and the companionship of men 
and books, in lieu of birds, and trees, and 
flowers, which have gladdened us for half 
a year. 

289 



